Critical and digital literacies

The other day at the web 2.0 workshop at my school a question was posed: is blogging and communicating online better than face to face communication? A trick question I thought. The answer is clear; face to face is always better than distance communication if it is possible. The benefit of setting up the community of inquiry with blogging habits that your classroom can become is the affordances this gives when this is working well – the possibilities of global collaboration leading to greater understanding among peoples.

But I was surprised. The people in the workshop answered the question that blogging gave opportunities to students within the classroom as well. The quiet student who blossoms forth in writing, the international students who, while they don’t like to speak in large class groups, are looking for ways to show their knowledge, the opportunity for students to fill out their answers with considered thought. And this wasn’t said but I know that the opportunities at school to learn how to be a digital citizen while in a safe and monitored environment with guidance at hand are a really important part of classroom blogging.

The workshop was really varied. I look forward to being able to introduce you to a French language blog soon as well.

Having a blogging classroom set up and having enough teachers using web 2.0 tools enables “just in time” learning to happen. We are solving problems together, with other teachers and with our students. I am at the moment trying to get Voicethreads recorded (which isn’t working for me currently) but I will not stop trying. I know that when it does work I will know a lot more than when I started. Being open to all these opportunities means I can make the most of my opportunities. Having students ready with web 2.0 capacities means that we try a new tool when it is invented.

One of my finds this weekend was from the Allan Luke webcasts. I listened to an episode from May 31^st this year on the new literacies which I really enjoyed. Allan Luke is at Queensland University, Australia, and has a global perspective. I liked his focus on social justice in curriculum design and his imperative not to infantilise the students in our schools by expecting less of them than they are used to doing in the their daily lives in critical literacies. Have a listen, see what you learn.