Will Richardson

Speaker, consultant, writer, learner, parent

Good Luck With That

By

Alex Reid on the National Council Teachers of English updated release of their literacy framework:

What NCTE recognizes is that English should be the means by which such literacy is acquired (at least in the US, which is the nation in “National Council”). To that I say, “good luck.” Good luck providing this professional development for existing teachers, who are not prepared to do this. Good luck finding university English departments with faculty to provide this literacy to the general population of college students, let alone educate preservice K-12 teachers or graduate students who will become university faculty. Good luck finding English departments who even remotely view digital literacy as a subject that even marginally concerns them, let alone one that would be central to their curriculum in the way that print literacy is now. As I suggested above, I think you’d have better luck selling the average college English department on becoming grammar-centric than you would on becoming digital-centric.

…The truth is that if this was 2003 and a department recognized that digital literacy was going to become the issue that might make or break their disciplinary future, then by now they might have four or five digital scholars hired and a couple tenured. Maybe they’d be in a position to deliver this content today. But few departments did that. This means the transition is likely to be rocky.

Rocky, indeed.

Writing to "Build the Larger Conversation"

By

So, Kathleen Blake Yancey has been an influence on my teaching for a good long time, all the way back to the mid 1990s when I was doing research on professional teaching portfolios during a sabbatical from classroom. Her work and ideas have been an important part of the conversation around teaching and writing, and her stature as former president of the National Council of Teachers of English makes her a well respected voice among those trying to understand the changes we’re all experiencing now. So it was a great treat to be able to do a virtual sit-down with her earlier today and talk about how the importance of reading and writing has grown, how these technologies are impacting our thinking of how to best teach literacy, and the very fun and at the same time complex moment in history we’re living through right now.

The one teaser point I’ll throw out here deals with why we need to think of the function of writing very differently. It’s not a new concept if you’ve frequented these parts, but it’s just so validating to hear someone like Kathi articulate it as well. It’s this: an important value of writing today is not simply to communicate but to get others engaged, to build a larger conversation around what we write. As she states in “Writing in the 21st Century” (a must read, btw) writing is now “newly technologized, socialized and networked.” And I wonder to what extent those currently teaching writing (which I think should be everyone in a classroom, btw) really get that on a practical and pedagogical level. As she says in the interview, none of us really know what the answers are right now, but we are at a tipping point of sorts at least in our recognition that something “large” is happening, and that it’s going to have some “large” effects on our teaching and learning lives.

Unfortunately, we had a couple of short drops from uStream in the middle, so the embedded videos below are in three parts. Also, here is the extremely engaging chat transcript that Sheryl was nice enough to capture. It’s all good stuff, and if you do invest the time to listen, would love, as always, to hear your reactions.

Part 1:

Part 2:

Part 3:

Kathleen Blake Yancey Interview on Thursday

By

Just a quick programming note: my interview with Kathleen Blake Yancey, author of “Writing in the 21st Century” and former president of the National Council of Teachers of English, has been rescheduled for this Thursday at noon EST. I have a host of questions to ask, but would love to know what you want to know, i.e. literacy, writing, reading and the importance of Web technologies in the process of all of it.

Please tune into our PLP live channel on uStream if you want to participate in the chat and converation.