I wanted to wait until I finished your book, “iWrite”, by Dana Wilbur.
Yet I felt so engaged that I just want to pass her message on.
At the time of writing, Dana W. is an assistant professor of Literacy.
She teaches classes at Montclair University in New Jersey.
IMHO [in my humble opinion} I think she has hit on a very innovative way to
combine her students incessant texting, chatting, and networking with the classwork
that must be accomplished.
These 'digital natives', [her terminology] are our future teachers, lawyers, doctors, etc.,
they are not a beligerent group ; merely doing what they know works.
Back in the day…when you were assigned a book, play etc. to read over the
summer break or even long week-end, you made sure to get the material
and honker down for an hour or two, read the book, make notes…and yes
sometimes even use cliff-notes to accomplish task.
Today the kids think nothing of ‘cutting and pasting’ straight off the
web, and honestly thinking this is how to learn..
This is called ‘plagerism’.
They are not taking the time needed to properly ‘understand’ the info,
they do not find it necessary to take the time to analyze the material.
They simply cut/paste, print, and hand it in, their research is on-line.
But before I go too far from the text of the book..
may I say kudos to Ms. D. W. for not condemning this.
She has actually created a way to instruct our teachers to combine
the strengths of the already accepted practise of texting 24/7..
and shows them how to use these very accessible tools, wikis, blogs and
digital storytelling to building a bridge between student’s outside of school use
and capitalizing on their engagement of new technologies.
How to capture the students’ daily literacy practices and develop them
for the kind of writing and learning so needed to continue their education.
I am not a teacher… but I found this book GR8!
kate
what comes natural, they grew up shaped by the Internet and cell phones, www, and email.
