Zotero Group at Diigo (weekly)
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Clive Thompson on the New Literacy – Annotated
Of course, good teaching is always going to be crucial, as is the mastering of formal academic prose. But it’s also becoming clear that online media are pushing literacy into cool directions. The brevity of texting and status updating teaches young people to deploy haiku-like concision. At the same time, the proliferation of new forms of online pop-cultural exegesis—from sprawling TV-show recaps to 15,000-word videogame walkthroughs—has given them a chance to write enormously long and complex pieces of prose, often while working collaboratively with others.
- I think Clive is being too literal about literacy. The really important literacies are not so obvious. My two cents: I argue that they are intensely social:
http://melaniemcbride.net/2009/07/03/the-hidden-curriculum-of-21st-century-learning/ – post by melmcbride
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Before the Internet came along, most Americans never wrote anything, ever, that wasn’t a school assignment. Unless they got a job that required producing text (like in law, advertising, or media), they’d leave school and virtually never construct a paragraph again.
- I presume the presumption is Americans in recent history? Are we talking about since the advent of the telephone/television? As with most generalizations, I’m sure there are exceptions. – post by rebeccadavis
- I don’t know whether “most Americans” is apt. If we are talking about Americans who went to school, there is plenty of evidence that they continued to write throughout their lives. Just pick up a history book and read the voluminous letters exchanged in the post. Read letters between virtually every politician in Lincoln’s era in Goodwin’s Team of Rivals. – post by jreed93523
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students were remarkably adept at what rhetoricians call kairos—assessing their audience and adapting their tone and technique to best get their point across.
- You need to read the various boards that kids write on. There’s more to modern writing than just texting. You also need to factor in that kids are reluctant to use the language of authorities that they have no interest in identifying with. They will repulse at the language of kairos, and do anything they can to say that “I don’t do that,” even though it is obvious from their actions that they do. They will gleefully scream “I don’t learn!” when clearly they do. It cuts both ways; You may be inclined to shout back “It’s clear that you don’t!” – post by lionkimbro
- if the students were all Stanford students then i’d question the generalizability of these findings. that being said, i don’t presonally see the “texting” type of writing showing up in any formal writing i assign. – post by jayhawksean
- Yes–I’d like to look more closely at how she arrived at her conclusion that they are “remarkably adept,” not that I’d challenge it necessarily, but I’m guessing that conclusion, unpacked, would explain a lot more about what she’s referring to there. – post by bboessen
- How do students figure out kairos, e.g., adapting to their audience? In the past, I’ve had students who couldn’t figure it out, and we’ve all seen jokes about students texting instead of writing. – post by rebeccadavis
- I think Clive is being too literal about literacy. The really important literacies are not so obvious. My two cents: I argue that they are intensely social:
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Learn How To Squat – Do Barbell Squats Correctly… | GymJunkies.com
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Giz Explains: How to Actually Make Coffee – How to make coffee – Gizmodo
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Simple Guidelines for Workday Quality Over Quantity – Multitasking – Lifehacker
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Academic Earth – Derivatives, slope, velocity, rate of change
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Personas | Metropath(ologies) | An installation by Aaron Zinman
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32 Trashy And Distorted Fonts For Your Next Grungy Design | Spyre Studios
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High-Speed Robot Hand Demonstrates Dexterity and Skillful Manipulation | Hizook
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Best Science Visualization Videos of 2009 | Wired Science | Wired.com
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
tellio :: Aug.30.2009 :: TechKnowledgE :: No Comments »