The "Read" in Read/Write
I have often heard the "blogosphere" defined as "the read/write Web." An interesting definition in and of itself!
In most of the popular press on and discussion about blogging, the emphasis on writing/publishing is clear. Where, I have asked, is the growth of tools to manage/share the intensive and extensive Web-based reading, which we know fuels good Web-based writing?
I am heartened on that front by furl. If you have not explored that tool, I urge you to give it a look. This post on Weblogg-ed has some great ideas and starting links.
Among other thoughts, asking students to collect/annotate/share reading sources may be less daunting as a first step than self-publishing via a blog. And no less a creative exercise in research, organization, critical thinking, and writing!
posted by Pete Smith at 8:23 AM
4 Comments:
I have got to agree with you here. If we can get our students to break the ice with blogs, this is a step in the right direction. I see how jazzed all of us are, and if it's possible to share some of this enthusiasmm, it can only benefit our students.
3:48 PM
You've both given me some food for thought. I tend to want to plunge in full out! Just reading, and getting used to that kind of literacy would be one way in with students. But, who can read without responding. That's hard--are maybe that's just extroverted verbal me speaking.
Ok, new vocabulary here:
blogroll--
is blogrolling--scrolling through and reading blogs?
Furling? Can you speak to that. I went to the site, but just saw information about how the software worked. Ok, it's 4:49 AM and I can't sleep bc I'm all excited from a great med report today so maybe I'm just not thinking clearly about furling.
Now the kind of litearcy skills needed to read, focus, think, cull, etc is definitely food for thought and research with our students as we try this out. I really liked this:
This entails a different kind of reading literacy, one that requires quick assessment of source reputation, skimming for main ideas, and the ability to synthesize snippets of information from many sources into coherent ideas (one of the skills developed from blogging
One of the things I wonder about is does one have to go into blogging with a high rate of literacy extant to be able to do that, OR if the blog is of a topic interesting to the student would that motivation facilitate those skills?
WDYT? (What do y'all think?)
2:52 AM
I am very curious in how to build skills for our students in being more critical in media literacy. Who are the sources? What's their agenda? Is this reliable and correct information?
What are some recent sources on this?
5:35 AM
Are asking this, in reference to Pete's article:
Who are the sources? What's their agenda? Is this reliable and correct information
Those are great "critical questiosm." It seems as if everything in education is motivated by some political or economic agenda or both.
I think we are just exploring the dynamics of this kind of literacy and I don't know enough about the author to answer this questions.
If we take it out of a political/social context just for a bit and think about it from a pure literacy standpoint, what do the issues become then?
Students who are reading linear text deal with "finding the main idea," "looking for supporting points," "considering the logic of an argument/set of directions/etc.
So if we take those skill sets out to non linear text with the accessibility of the blog then what happens? Let's start there as we begin to "unpack" the larger issues.
WDYT?
9:55 AM
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