Reflection Journal week 4

Reflection on this week 4:

What can I learn from my own frustration in my attempts to use the technology required for this class? I had a hard time finding two of the texts for week four: Grabe and McEneany. The first one had no link or specified site in this week’s instructions, and the second had a URL, but was misspelled in both mentions. Googling Grabe and the title took me to the book—reviews, Amazon, but not an article. When I went to the home site for McEneany’s, there were two articles, and both of them seemed possible, but I didn’t have time for both. I didn’t want to bother Ellie, yet again, because I feel like that annoying student, who just won’t let things be, and wants everything specified (and spoon-fed...that’s how I sometimes feel when I’m the teacher). So, I went to the litandwriting site to get emails and emailed a couple of classmates who had mentioned the two texts in their postings.

I couldn’t wait for the responses, because who knows when they’d get to check their email and I have to concentrate most of my work to two days (with daycare). I went to the litandwriting site and looked for both articles in every section until I found the link (and title) of the McEneany article. Then I went to webCT and finally found Grabe in the electronic reserves.

Feeling out of touch because others had apparently found these more readily than me (which means they understood earlier where to look), I realized that I hadn’t seen a reflection prompt anywhere and I remembered that I had been out of the loop with Yahoogroups. So, I went into my email and took quite a long time to get into yahoo groups (I was probably typing something wrong, maybe I confused ID or password with googlegroup, who knows?). I seemed to be signed up, but didn’t find any message—don’t really know how to get in if I don’t get an email with a link...which I didn’t have past the initial invitation to join. Now I felt more out of touch...so I emailed Ellie, feeling like more than a pest.

So much frustration, and what felt like so much time spent just trying to find the material to work with. Have I (and consequently “we”) become spoiled because the Internet is so fast, that spending an hour to “find” material seems like an unreasonable amount of time? I remember spending days in the library as an undergrad looking for just a couple of articles which would serve my purposes. Still, there is a part of the difficulty in this anecdote which seems unnecessary and unhelpful....But, is that not a natural impression when one engages for the first time with something difficult to penetrate: Did I not think Bahktin was “unreasonably” obscure the first (few) times I read any chapter?

After all, in this case, the content of this class IS the process of using the technology at hand. (Although, the fact that I must read, elaborate, post, comment, and reflect raises the stakes on avoiding that “wasted” time, since time is a limited commodity...perhaps that is the “unhelpful” feeling I have?) But, what happens when the technology is not part of the content I’m teaching students? What happens with that added work which accompanies technology-assisted learning, and the frustration it produces, when “how” to use technology is not part of the content of a class?

As I continue reading for this class, it becomes increasingly clear that when using technology in a classroom, the use of it will always be part of the content. I am beginning to understand McEneaney’s observation from his abstract (pdf version—couldn’t access the path-based one), that hypertext literacy “poses special difficulties with respect to the process focus advocated by content literacy experts.”

So, one of the main questions to reflect on this week is, “What do we need to learn from our students (and ourselves) and to teach students (and ourselves) about the issues and problems that readers/researchers will confront...?” I need to learn and teach that the content of any work I do/require using technology is also about using that technology. I, first, and my students as well, will need to consider the knowledge I acquire in using the tool to be equivalent to that which I add to my intellectual basis when I read an article which does not serve the purposes of a paper I am writing: I never consider that “wasted” time; rather, I file it away in my mind as something that enriches my potential thoughts on future material. When I learn something new about how to use technology, albeit out of frustration, I need to consider this something which will at some point be “helpful.” This is something I need to teach my students.

I definitely agree with Kajder’s assertion that these tools help students grow as thinkers, readers, and writers, especially when it comes to discussion boards. I think that they offer a paper-trail discussion which is very valuable and impossible to realize without the technology. As I mentioned in one of my postings for this course, I think discussion boards allow quiet students to engage in the dialogue, and they force those who “participate” without reflection or direction to think and review the coherence and relevance of what they contribute. And, they allow everyone to literally “see” the conversation (especially with the graph form of the WebCT discussion board. as I also agree with Kajder in that they require infinite patience—I have experienced it on the side of the student and I can only imagine it is equally so, on the side of the teacher. This is not only from a technology-use standpoint, but also from the workload perspective. As I also mentioned previously, taking part in these online dialogues can be like writing a mini-paper each time. I think this is incredibly valuable practice, but it is also a lot of work, both for students and teachers. When Krause describes his experience gone “bad” with blogs, this is one thing he never reflects on, which I think needs to be taken into account when we incorporate these community-building technologies into our course work expectations (see my posting on Krause on Engltech.blogspot).
Would I take a course exclusively online? Not if I could avoid it. The distance and “disappearance” factor which takes place online—because responses can be delayed or not given at all—and the possibility for misunderstanding, which needed immediate clarification, both of these are less possible face-to-face. I really need the immediacy and accountability of the in-person class (even if it’s every other class).
Below is a very rough idea of how I might try to use a blog in a class. I thought of it and posted it as part of a comment on other people’s comments to one of my postings, and I’ll include part of that text here:
--I think that perhaps new techniques and formats might most beneficial when gradually incorporated, making sure to use a foundation of what is familiar and comfortable to students. For example, if I wanted to incorporate a classroom blog to a classroom of high school students who were already familiar with writing in reflection journals, I might ask students to make one posting about one same theme (perhaps a novel chapter, a play scene, a journalism article); then I could ask each student to read one other person's post and write a reflection on both (their own and the classmate's) in their journals in relation to the text; once I have read these reflections and given a prompt for further dialogue, I would explain the use of the comment feature on the blog site, and ask students to make a comment to that same other blogger taking into account their own journal entry and my comments. My hope would be to take advantage of the publishing aspect of blogs, while fostering dialectical thinking in a medium which I don't really view as dialogue-driven, and also to scaffold the use of technology, so that students don't get discouraged by the medium.

In the school where I work, I am required to assign homework 4-5 nights a week and this counts as 10% of the term grade. In addition, class participation is 20% of the grade. I have never been happy about the nightly HW because I can't really create meaningful, relevant work that can be done in one night about the work for just one day, and that I can check the following day in order to give them credit. I end up giving worksheets on something just covered in that class. Anyway, I think I might use a discussion board for students to contribute to conversations about a number of topics or prompts throughout, say, a 2-week period. (I am taking the WebCT discussion board as a model since it’s the only one I’m familiar with.) This would allow for the topics/questions/prompts to be more meaningful because they'd be about a longer topic. It would also allow the students to administer their time however they want (they could contribute to all of them at once, or in parts, as responses to the rest of the discussion. This would also add a valuable piece for the class participation portion o their grade, offering different ways to participate.

6/14/07
I think that in order to teach with technology, it is essential to experience what it is like on the other end, “learning with technology.” In that sense, I think that the idea of offering this class partly on-line is valuable, because it reveals what happens to the student once the assignment has been “given” and the student is at home (or wherever) trying to complete it. Therefore, although I set out an hour ago to respond to complete assignments and respond to prompts, I have instead decided to reflect on the process that I am going through as a student “learning” with technology.
The technology introduced this week is completely foreign to me. I have never used blogs, discussion boards, or wikis. Since our introductory class on these tools, I have gotten several emails from different blogs and from a “googlegroup.” I don’t know what to do with each of these. They don’t contain any (understandable) message or instructions in the body of the email, just (multiple) links. Once I click on these, I am asked to sign in and I am shown a list of people (some of whose names I don’t recognize because they are enigmatic email addresses), or several blogs (2 of which are mine, because I accidentally set 2 up and don’t know how to delet one). I click once again and I am taken to blank spaces profiles or blogs (Are other people having as hard a time as I am, or have they just written somewhere else?). I wish I had some phone numbers—I am desperate for a human voice to bombard with questions, anxiety, and frustration.
All of this clicking back and forth takes away not only precious time, but my confidence in my ability to use this technology. Then I am left deflated, confused, and feeling like I don’t have anything productive to respond or contribute on how this technology can be used benefially. This week, as a student, I feel completely “unbenefitted.”
In contrast, the two previous weeks, I felt emboldened and encouraged to find ways to introduce computer technology into future teaching. I participated quite a bit in the discussion board on WebCT and on the UMB Lit and Writing website. After those two weeks of relative success, when reading Kajder’s Chapter 8 for our class last Tuesday, I underlined with enthusiasm, “The twist that technology provides is to amplify our resources, allowing students to dialogue and collaborate with writers, thinkers, students, and communities across the globe in real-time interactions.” (98) The benefit in this is so self-evident, that all I could do was underline it with an exclamation point on the side. Yes, of course, it is wonderful to be able to collaborate with other writers. These two weeks of on-line discussions had proved it (and that is without even introducing anyone outside our course into the conversation). Although they lacked the immediacy of face-to-face contact, the written discussions on those sites offered the opportunity for a more reflective dialogue, one in which I had time to review material, re-read the previous postings, and call on authors I recalled from outside this course.
The other excerpt which struck me was that making contributions through computer technology “allows [students] to communicate their ideas, no matter how shy they might be.” (100) To this, I would like to add that it not only allows them to do so, it FORCES them to do so. I find this important when working at the high school level, where so many students feel they can keep quiet and stay under the radar: these students often do long-term written assignments and homework, but are not willing to view the classroom as a learning community, to which all members contribute while they are there. In contrast with these silent students, there are also commonly students who believe that if they simply talk (regardless of the relevance or thought exhibited in the contribution), this counts as participating in class. In her section on discussion tools in Chapter 4, Kajder states that they “establish a low-stakes entry point for those students who might traditionally be reluctant to enter into a whole-class discussion.” (37) This reiterates the idea that students who are traditionally silent now have a forum from which to participate without the looks and immediate reaction of their peers or their teacher, either because these are inimidatin to them or because they are uninterested. On the other hand, a different angle to Kajder’s low-stakes assertion is that it creates a specific entry point with topics, and prompts or questions. Students are forced to dialogue ABOUT THE TOPIC. The fact that their comment is in writing gives them both the opportunity to reflect on what they want to say, and the obligation to make their contribution meaningful and relevant, one that continues the conversation.
So, how does this description of my previous enthusiasm for discussion boards connect to my deflatedness with blogs and googlegroup emails this week? Perhaps it has to do with discourse communities: I’ve never been on a blog or a member of one of these email groups, and this week’s tasks don’t call on any of the skills I master in one of the discourse communities I belong to. Instead, I am an outsider to this discourse community—there is too much shared knowledge I don’t possess. I find it useful to reflect on why I am feeling discouraged this week, resisting the temptation to turn off the computer, and trying to translate this experience into something I will use in my teaching. When talking about online communities, Kajder points out that “we [teachers] need to get the initial community built.” (102) I now relate this to discourse communities—these need to be established or taught as well. Thinking of the use of technology in the classroom as a task of building a discourse community will help me as I teach with technology.

Testing. Don't really understand what I'm doing or what the password is.