The Wikiness

I came across that point to web 2.0 positives. I believe I’ll enjoy them both in the new year.

The first is Ms.Durff’s blog, which is full of positive, if brief, reflections on working digital tech in with the classroom. She posted an intriguing Edutopia video of Henry Jenkins, USC professor of media. In the five minute video, he describes the need for networks of teachers collaborating with each other digitally in a “self-correcting groups.” These same teachers in their classrooms would give up total “control” of the learning. Teachers will value student digital skills and teaching information “accountability” skills. What emerges is not yet known, but it will allow learning transactions to happen in entirely new collaborative ways.

The second was my discovery of a digital literacy maven in education I’m sure I’ll be enjoying. Professor Elizabeth Losh’s VirtualPolitik blog has a sardonic sense of humor and mind-stretching reflections on the ways in which rhetoric has and is changing with communications technology. In her opening statement she explains the motive for her researches: “I think that digital rhetoric is especially important now that so many citizens rely on official websites as sources of information.” Amen, sister. The thing is, she’s so far one of the only researchers publishing on the intersection of information technology, rhetoric, and democracy.

Professor Losh is an active member of the MLA, a wonderful organization I used to belong to. The MLA is great for taking the broader, global perspective. And Professor Losh is not only a good writer, she is an expert on good blog writing. I will learn much from her in 2010, I believe.