Imagine my excitement when I came across the title “Infusing Multimodal Tools and Digital Literacies into an English Education Program” by Aaron Doering, Richard Beach, and David O’Brien dated October 2007. The journal, English Education, has hot off the press information about the very topic I’m interested in, or so I thought. I feel as though I’m writing a review for a publication called Wet Blankets because I would like to review something helpful to all of us, but the article was rather long, time to write the review is rather short, so I’m going to briefly tell you why I was so disappointed with it. But first, I’ll provide a bit of context. The article is about using Web 2.0 tools in courses for preservice teachers who then use the Web 2.0 tools with middle school students.
Mainly, the article with the promising title fails to deliver adequate support for its claims. But it also makes statements that don’t follow one another logically:
For example, while traditional print-based reading instruction focused on inferring the ‘main point’ or idea—based on linear processing of information, in reading and producing digital texts, adolescents need to know how to select certain links on a page that will provide them with needed relevant information (Kress, 2003).
This statement seems to confuse reading for comprehension with conducting research. And the authors don’t say that students need to learn to select links in addition to traditional reading. Instead they say, “The shift to active use of multimodel, interative Web 2.0 tools suggests the need to redefine notions of reading, composing, and performing processes to infuse digital literacies that students use daily into English language arts curriculum.” Isn’t that a bit like saying the shift to students’ frequent consumption of carbonated, caffeinated soft drinks suggests the need to redefine notions of nutrition and to place vending machines in the high schools? Not one sound pedagogical reason is offered to use Web 2.0 tools, which is a shame because that’s particularly what I was hoping to read about.
Another statement proposes that “as critical readers in these virtual spaces, [students] then assess how visual design functions rhetorically through developing ‘visual arguments’ that are evaluated in terms of their impact, coherence, visual salience, and organization (Selfe, 2005; Wysocki, 2004).” Unfortunately the authors don’t address how students will learn to be critical readers in virtual spaces. They just are.
In order not to bludgeon you with quotations, I’ll just give a final example of the authors assumptions regarding using technology in the classroom:
For example, [students] may critique an ad with the image of an SUV in a rugged, backwoods setting and transport that same SUV to sitting stuck in traffic in a smog-filled city. Recontextualizing the original positive meaning of the image to a negative one serves to interrogate the consumer ideology of the SUV as a necessary vehicle for life in the backwoods, an ideology that masks issues of gas consumption and pollution (Beach & O’Brien, 2005; Beach & Thein, 2006).
In the margin by this comment, I wrote this question: Do students actively critique, or do they simply enjoy having the ability to change images? My question is answered a few pages later. An anonymous preservice teacher notes, “I had no idea how fast somebody would finish something and a lot of [students] just cut and pasted—that’s how they do things now off the Internet like ‘Okay, here is my report!’”
Numerous other examples are presented in the article, but none of them explain how Web 2.0 tools are used either to teach or to learn but simply to do. I understand that a lot of learning takes place by doing; however, I don’t think that interrogating consumer ideology takes place by cutting and pasting, or even by using more sophisticated technological methods of manipulating images. Critical thinking and inquiry as habits of mind need to be taught and learned first.
In conclusion, I’m truly sorry I’m not able to add anything helpful to our inquiry, but I continue to keep an open mind, and I look forward to reading a review of a text that demonstrates sound pedagogical reasons for “infusing” technology into the classroom.
Leslie, your review was helpful. It seems like new things (especially in education?) often generate a lot of uncritical use or promotion. I'll subscribe to Wet Blankets!
--Harriet
Interesting and it actually connects with the article I read which, despite being written in 2005, advocates (and even demonstrates) the teaching of the skills Leslie desperately desires from this article. Sadly, as this article and my own experience demonstrate, teachers themselves don't know how to evaluate, use, and TEACH these new skills. I guess that's why we ATI! ~Mauro
