A busy semester with updates in abundance soon. For now a few quick, DML-related notes:

• If you are going to be at the DML conference this week or the Make2Learn symposium tomorrow, send me a tweet and say hello. (I’m also one of the judges for the M2L youth competition – looking forward to the submissions from youth.)
• I wrote a recent blog post, “Are We in Danger of Losing Sight of Urban Schools and their Libraries?” over at DMLcentral.
• I discuss my dissertation research in the video seen here.

Coming up soon: discussing mobile devices and pedagogies, creating action, and driving in the snow.

It took a Monopoly-related announcement to get me out of my blogging hibernation.

The bulk of the article is focused on the fact that the new Monopoly piece will be a cat, based on a popular vote. It is mentioned, secondly that the feline will be replacing the iron as your capitalist token of success or failure in the game.

The first iron was patented by Henry Seeley on June 6, 1882. It weighed 15 pounds and the slow process of moving metal across fabric revolutionized (I would argue) gender stereotypes in the U.S., guided directions of western fashion,  and ushered in the worst design for ironing boards that would follow. Entire wars were fought and scientific discoveries hinged on the element its name derives from. Think about how important this iconic design and the lessons of industry and society are for the young people that scorch the streets of Baltic Avenue in their circular pilgrimage to the Boardwalk.

And to be replaced by a cat.

A cat?

A cat!

What are cats good for? Nothing. Cats are good for the internets. That’s it.

In all seriousness, this article in Slate illustrates my real concerns about the loss of the iron. The history of U.S. labor (on the same day that the U.S. Postal Service announced plans to discontinue Saturday delivery – some speculate to continue nationwide union busting) is being lost on the post-industrial generation that will grow up with credit card tracking, unhackable, cat-filled games.

Sure, the people voted, but the people are wrong. Yes, I’m an advocate for democratic action … BUT (and it’s a big but), look at the context. Is Monopoly at all about fairness, equal footing, or direct democracy? NO! It’s about chances and bankrupting your grandma to the Stone Age and going directly to jail without passing go.

Pedagogically, Monopoly is an important tool for demonstrating socioeconomic practices. In reading “the world” of Monopoly, the ways it limits reflections of actual society are important within classrooms. It is was a relic of problematic foundations that this country is built on.

I’ve complained about Hasbro’s poor Monopoly decisions on this blog before.

As I write this, I am concurrently planning work with my colleague focused on helping Latino youth in Fort Collins help rewrite the history of Northern Colorado in an effort to recognize the continuing contributions of the migrant labor force. In doing so, we are playing with the idea that the elementary students we are working with will “remix history” to validate the past, present, and future of historically marginalized communities. We are rewriting world-based texts to change society. In similar ways, Monopoly is doing the same and the implications are insidious.

We’ve let Hasbro  ruin a Purr-fect game for meow and forever.

Another year in reading and I’m left tallying and questioning. Much of my research lately focuses on what counts as reading. A healthy portion of the books included here are audiobooks (I’ve mentioned previously they are usually listened to at double speed). Is that reading? As one of my students noted, it’s more like “like reading.” Similarly, the seemingly random line between what’s tallied and what’s not is problematic. My list favors the bound not the stapled. Early in 2012 I read Who Is Jake Ellis as a trade paperback collection of comic books. I am currently reading the second arc of this story, Where is Jake Ellis in serialized form, one issue each month as they are released. When this is done, these comics (and the many, many more that I’ll read) won’t be tallied here. Nor will the single chapters of books or many journal articles I’ll dive into. Nor will the hundreds of blog posts I’ll swim through. Or the Youtube comments or cooking recipes or the or the ortheorthe. I only catalog so much of my life and, at least for this annual post, I’ve decided it’s going to be things that are bound and things that typically have isbns. Further, as the number of YA texts I read continues to increase, I am interested in what is typically considered “academic.” For example, I guarantee you that reading Gossip Girl this year was a purely academic effort, despite the fact that it’s not counted as such in this year’s list. All that ranting being ranted, here’s the list:

Books read in 2012: 121
Comics and graphic novels included in reading total: 23
Books of poetry included in reading total: 2
Books reread included in reading total: 7
Academic & Education related books included in reading total: 21
YA and Junior Fiction books included in reading total: 32

A few thoughts and highlights (and here are my posts on books read in 2011, 2010, and 2009):

In terms of fiction, I find myself thinking back most frequently to Steve Erickson’s These Dreams of You. There is a longer discussion of race, representation, and privilege within the book that I think Erickson somewhat glides beyond. However, it’s a book that I really enjoyed and was generally overlooked this year.

I spent more time this year with 1Q84 than any other book. It was a text that dragged me slowly and resistantly into its long and patient world. I found it stereotypical and misogynistic to begin with only to be pulled into the surreal double-mooned realm of Murakami’s latest off-kilter universe.

Not a whole lot, again, in terms of BSRAYDEKWTDWT (that is: Books So Ridiculously Awesome You Don’t Even Know What To Do With Them). However, Chris Ware’s Building Stories is such a great example of the genre that I’m reserving discussion of it for a future post on literacies, archiving, geography and exploration. Suffice to say that Ware’s work is so universally acclaimed that one has to just throw a digital rock and you’ll hit a link or two or three or four praising the book.

I really liked Many Subtle Channels by Daniel Levin Becker. Essentially an insider’s history of the Oulipo, the book is neither overly academic nor entirely focused on the landscape of experimental literature. Instead the unique personalities, voices, and movements of a group of writers emerge in a compellingly readable book. Anyone interested even remotely in the idea of “experimental” or playful literature should take a look at Becker’s book.

In terms of comics, I finally tackled Duncan the Wonder Dog and feel it deserves the smattering of acclaim it’s garnered from a generally small readership. A page from the book is at the top of the post and with nearly every page of the book as intricately labored upon as this one, the book’s depth and design match the complex ethical exploration of the relationship between animals and human.

Gabrielle Bell’s collection of comic diaries The Voyeurs was also a powerful image-based book I appreciated and continued to reflect upon this year. It reminded me of a hyper-verbal version of Lewis Trondheim’s Little Nothings series. The sequence detailing Bell’s experiences at the San Diego Comic Con were particularly entertaining to view.

Like his documentary films, I found Errol Morris’ Believing is Seeing engrossing and challenging. The questions about truth and image and representation reminded me of the best of some of Weschler’s book length profiles. Morris is deliberate in how he makes and develops a thesis and I can imagine each of the essays in the book acting as useful examplars for multimodal argumentation.

Finally, I concluded this year by tackling Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events. All of them. I’m still reflecting over the relationship between the series and a certain boy wizard with a lightning bolt on his head. I’m also interested in the linguistic development of the book, particularly Sunny’s developing babble over the thirteen books and the way it exhibits a kind of double consciousness (if anyone has any academic texts related to the Snicket series, the are appreciated).

As 2013 approaches, I am halfway through Sergio de la Pava’s A Naked Singularity. The book’s frenetic jumps from courtrooms to meetings with clients to bitching about said clients to family gatherings to insane neighbors and more than a few encounters between the protagonist and Uncle Sam and a Chimpanzee make the book one I’m enjoying at a slow, winter’s pace.

Just because we can have an entire class via Twitter doesn’t mean we should. Scrolling through my morning news the other day, I cam across this Chronicle blogpost: “In Classroom Experiment, All Discussion Happened via Twitter.”

Based on the article, the experiment took place for one class. It’s not clear if the class will sustain its Twitter use beyond the single lecture. Some students “had created Twitter accounts just for the class” so I suspect this was a bit of a one time thing.

Just to be clear, I am a fan of Twitter and I am a fan of using Twitter for learning and classroom engagement. I’m also a fan of experimental classes where things go kinda bananas once in a while (see my recent post about arming students with chalk or dig for student tweets about geocaching). My Composition 301d course began with a chaotic run through of “Do Move Say”.

So a class that uses Twitter to explore cellphone culture makes a lot of sense to me. I think it would be really strange not to have Twitter integrated into that class. And I’m reading into this, but it doesn’t seem like it is. Integrated, I mean. As a one-off activity, I wonder how effectively Twitter is used as learning tool as much as simply an Oulipian constraint for the class to hurdle over. In my own practice and in the way I see others integrating Twitter in ELA classrooms, it is the persistence and amplification of voices over the course of a semester that makes Twitter a valuable resource.

I think what troubles me most about an article like this is its implications for non-tweeting readers: it sounds like maybe this is the way to use Twitter. I am slightly terrified of this article encouraging others to gather a bunch of people in a room and ask them to silently tap on phones together. Why even show up? The powerful hashtag spaces I tend to lurk like #engchat and #literacies help connect me to other educators that are discussing similar topics that interest me. But the whole point is we don’t have to be anywhere near each other for this to take place.

In my own research, I’ve been drawn to the ways that mobile devices and apps/resources like Twitter can help mediate communication and experiences. By cutting off other kinds of communication practices, Twitter is being forced into a kind of tool that isn’t so useful for developing conversation. It is inauthentic. Having a class sit in a class and tweet in order to “get” Twitter isn’t what Twitter seems designed for. A backchannel? Great! Asynchronous communication? Awesome! Prolonged communication across spaces. Rock! Lecture and discussion in a silent room? Not so much.

To Professor Groening’s credit, this is an experiment and a temporary one. I just question the premise of the experiment to begin with: “The Twitter discussion was just one of the course’s many experiments in “experiential learning.” Others have included asking students to create photo essays with their cellphone cameras, and a final project in which students use their phones to organize flash mobs.”

And I’m sure the class was fun. The syllabus looks neat (and most students on the hashtag seemed to enjoy themselves). However, I think about the lessons this sends others about using Twitter in learning spaces. For one class in one space: go hog-wild. When the Chronicle reports this as awesome (and why is this even report-worthy to begin with?) I get a little worried about what kinds of pedagogical directions this sends.

My students at CSU are crazy (and awesome)!

I was inspired by the classroom dynamic in my composition course to blog about ties and public writing and classroom community. Read the post at DMLcentral here.

FACT: This photo is featured prominently in one of my NCTE sessions … that’s how awesome this conference will be.

 

The NCTE annual conference is coming up this week. It’s going to be a busy (and awesome) conference.

I’ll post my general itinerary below (noting that there are some time conflicts that are problematic). However, I’d first like to invite all NCTE members to a general Research Forum meeting. Cindy O’Donnell-Allen and I will be co-chairing the Research Forum. The meeting will be held bright and early:

Saturday, November 17
8:30 a.m. – 9:45 a.m.
Diego Restaurant, Convention Center Walkway

Cindy and I are interested in using our meeting time at NCTE as an opportunity to collectively share a vision for where our research is headed, who conducts this research, and how it is articulated to NCTE members and the general public. A couple of goals we have include integrating even more teacher voice within NCTE’s research and to encouraging the work of early-career researchers. We are particularly interested to hear from you about what specific research initiatives you would like to see NCTE pursue in the coming year. Please join us.

Also worth noting is the CEE colloquium taking place on the Monday following the conference. It will be awesome:

RAISING THE BIG TOP: ARTS, LITERACY, AND CIVIC ENGAGEMENT
Monday, November 19, 2012, 9:00 a.m. – 3:30 p.m.

This day-long workshop will interest K-adult teachers, teacher educators, graduate students and researchers. Presenters/performers include representatives from Cirque du Soleil, the Smith Center for the Performing Arts and a local school. They will be joined by English education faculty  from Colorado State University: Pam Coke, Antero Garcia,  Cindy O’Donnell-Allen, and workshop facilitator, Louann Reid.

If you’re interested in attending I believe registration info for this post-conference workshop can be found here.

The rest of my itinerary follows and includes an (awesome) ignite talk, an (awesome) workshop focused on critical media literacy, an (awesome) roundtable discussing digital third space stuffy, and an (awesome) morning session about storytelling as critical consciousness. It will be an awesome conference and I hope to see you in Vegas. Send me a tweet to say hello!

Hope to see many of you there!

Quick note: I’ll also be making a quick stop at LRA at the end of the month. Send me a tweet if you’ll be there.

I think it’s getting worse. I used to hold my tongue and nod along with everyone else. The problem is I’m tired of not seeing folks of color in films. I’m tired of picking “good” YA texts for the classes I’m teaching and seeing white privilege reinforced on every page. I’m tired of not seeing the lives and experiences of my former South Central Los Angeles students represented in the books we read.*

I’m pretty sure my students might be getting tired of me: I’m a bit of a broken record when it comes to race and politics of representation when discussing literature, popular media, pedagogy, NCLB, relational aspects of connecting with students.

Sometimes (often), I fret about whether it might be best to let it slide. For one class, let the “race-thing” not be brought up. For one movie, don’t let the first thing you say when you walk out of the theater be, “Well, that’s gotta be the whitest movie ever made.”**

But.

But I just can’t. It feels irresponsible not to.

Case in point: tonight I saw Wreck It Ralph. It was fun. The videogame references, the unexpected plot developments, the playful short film before the feature: it was better than its marketing campaign led me to believe. But then…

See, here’s the thing: I’m pretty sure every character is white (except for ancillary villains shown in a bad-guy support group at the beginning of the film… hmmm…). Ally pointed out that title character Ralph might possibly be something non-white. And that’s good, right? I mean he is the protagonist. Except that the attributes we learn about our hero is that he has halitosis, a penchant for making bad decisions, and oafish strength. Not exactly the apotheosis of a young person’s role model.

And then there was the police brutality. Without giving away anything in the plot, there is a part of the film where Ralph is detained. Though he’s already restrained in the sweetest possible way, the two cop-like figures take to physically accosting him. This is done for laughs. Like the part where Ralph can’t move so the cop tasers him in the face: funny, right?

I know. It’s just a movie. Let it go.

But.

But I just can’t. I think about the ways these humorous scenes slowly reinforce lessons about social behavior and normality for the packed theater I sat in. Mix the giggles from this scene with the giggles about the use of the word duty/doody and it’s not quite clear where the line is drawn. And if Ally’s right and Ralph IS supposed to be non-white … well then, congratulations, Disney: you just got America to laugh at police beating up a person of color.

This turned into a frustrated rant. Sorry. I am actually genuinely interested in a pedagogical issue here: when is it our responsibility as teachers to “turn off” the critical lens? Ever? Does it ever interfere with our other content responsibilities?

*This week, my class is reading and discussing David Levithan’s Boy Meets Boy. I really like this book. It also, however, makes me wonder about the politics of queer identity in YA. Who gets to be gay in YA texts? Is this also a marginalized white privilege? (Future blog post about this at some point.)

**Film in question, by the way, was the Perks of Being a Wallflower. Seriously though, EVERY character was white. Seriously.

Abstract:

This article shares findings from a year-long study about social practices of high school youth with mobile devices during school time. In particular, this study found that students see their school time as fluidly social and academic. Educators and policy-makers need to carefully consider these social practices when preparing 21st century youth for engaging with technology in responsible and meaningful ways beyond their time in school.