Hybrid AcademyDecember 16, 2008Beth Brunk-Chavez

Students must be able to use computers effectively as well as participate in the construction and reconstruction of technological systems. What is needed is an approach to computer literacy that is both useful and professionally responsible (7).

If teachers fail to adopt a postcritical stance… it is entirely probable that students will have a much more

difficult time understanding computers in critical, contextual, and historical ways…

…that technology designs, informed by pedagogical and cultural values not our own, will define and redefine literacy practices in ways that are less than desirable…

…and that computer literacy initiatives will simply serve to perpetuate rather than alleviate existing social inequities (13).

Selber discusses three types of technological literacies: Functional Critical Rhetorical

Students need to achieve functional literacy, but it represents technological skills detached from social/cultural contexts; computer functions as a tool (32-33).

“technological proficiency” We need to help our students get

here, but it’s not the end point.

Students are encouraged to recognize and question the politics of computers; computer as cultural artifact.

Technologies are recognized as systems rather than things; access means more than just having a computer.

Students begin to engage in design processes, place computers in a social context, question usability, interrogate biases, purposes, consider audiences, etc.

Students become reflective producers of technology.

Students who are not adequately exposed to all three literacy categories will find it difficult to participate fully and meaningfully in technological activities (24).

Social networking can help develop all three literacies.

A fear of technology-enhanced pedagogies is that they will further decenter the teacher. The students will feel disconnected; so will teachers. How do students and instructors adapt?

One answer is to encourage students to participate in cooperative and/or collaborative learning Shift in pedagogy▪ sage on stage vs. guide on the side

Difference between the two▪ Cooperative▪ Collaborative

Michael Schrage (MIT) argued that "collaboration, without exception, requires" shared space. The nature of shared space is variable and dynamic; it can be a virtual space, a physical space, or a digital space. It can be a blackboard, a whiteboard, an online chat room, or discussion board.

What's important, he found, is that "you need to have the media where the ideas can be captured and represented and those representations can be modified and played with."

Teaching with technology provides ample opportunities to create and use shared spaces. A digitized class creates and maintains shared spaces in ways that a f2f classroom cannot.

Until an instructor decides to use the discussion board more as a forum for working through ideas and activities and less as a virtual refrigerator for Post-It notes, then technical efforts toward creating a space for collaborative activity remain empty shells.

WhiteboardsDiscussion boardsWikis

Good social networking tools that aren’t shared spaces necessarily Blogs

Create assignments that develop critical and rhetorical literacies.

Encourage collaboration, rather than cooperation, when appropriate.

Create assignments that generate the necessity for share spaces.

Keep groups small—no more than 7 per group (3-5 generally works best).

Have set policies about what your expectations are generally and specifically.

Don’t interfere with discussions.

Make a clear connection between what is done online and what is done in class.

Give students a chance to meet each other in both shared spaces.

Much of the success has to do with what you require from the start. It doesn’t always happen spontaneously.

For peer review of writing or projects Have students post their papers in the

discussion boards. Peers can grab the papers, respond using tracking and commenting, and return papers.

Collaborative projects Have students write and revise on a wiki

Reading notes/reading responses Post reading notes with responses to

discussion board

Brunk-Chavez, B. & Miller S. “Decentered, disconnected, and digitized: The importance of shared space.” Kairos 11.2. http://english.ttu.edu/kairos/11.2/topoi/brunk-miller/index.html

Schrage, M. (1990). Shared minds: The new technologies of collaboration. New York: Random House.

Selber, S. A. (2004). Multiliteracies for a digital age. Illinois: Southern Illinois University Press.