Maria+for+Dec+3

Maria Velickovic Critical Commentary 12/3/08 // From Lankshear & Knobel: // // From Larson & Marsh: // // From //// Shannon //// : // The topic I have chosen to focus upon for this week is changes within literacy practices within the educational setting. The three articles offer different takes on changes in literacy, but all admit that change is occurring and that there is a necessity for change to continue to occur. The Lankshear & Knobel article comments on changing literacy practices in technology, through memes; the Larson & Marsh article focuses upon changing literacy practices for initial and professional teachers; and the Shannon article focuses upon the problems created by the No Child Left Behind Act, as well as other social implementations in the field of education. It is important to take into consideration the ideas of the authors, as they call for change within the field of education which can serve to benefit not only the children in the schools, but also the teachers.
 * “The online memes we studied were often rich and diverse in humour, including the quirky, offbeat, potty humor, the bizzarely funny, parodies, and the acerbically ironic. Intertextuality was a regular feature, most notably in the form of wry cross-references to different everyday and popular culture events, icons, and phenomena.” (221)
 * “A ‘big L’ conception of new //L//iteracies recognizes that everyday life is often amplified through participation of and interaction with people one may never meet and, moreover, that in online environments this interaction and participation may occur in way not previously possible.” (234-235)
 * “We suggest that…[a] key feature… of [teacher-researcher networks is]… the involvement of an academic who can work alongside the teachers and provide the kind of support which can be offered by someone who has a wide knowledge of research and publications in the field” (147)
 * “In this model, there are seven factors that impact on the construction of the literacy curriculum. First is the prescribed curriculum itself. As this always frames the curriculum offered by pre-and in-service teachers, this is placed at the center of the diagram. [The other] six factors are: internal influences; external influences; subject knowledge; pedagogical content knowledge; sociocultural factors and structural factors.” (149)
 * “The official rationale behind the calls for highly qualified teachers is a reaction to the increasing tendency of school administrators to hire unlicensed teachers and to assign licensed teachers to responsibilities outside the parameters of their teaching specialties in order to fill vacancies.” (170)
 * “Continued and growing poverty and segregation make a mockery of the NCLB commitment that all children will learn. Of course, all children can and do learn daily, but what are poor and minority children learning when American adults stand by silently, witnessing these inequalities?” (195)
 * Discussion **
 * Reflections and Questions **
 * 1) There has been a lot of criticism of the No Child Left Behind Act, much of it saying that students are being taught to take the test, rather than being taught the actual material. Although the previous point is valid, what changes can be made to the NCLB Act to best benefit the students? What kind of compromise do you think can be created so that government officials can obtain the results they are looking for, without sacrificing the educational experiences of the students.
 * 2) The Larson and Marsh article comments on the prevalence of statewide standards and the pressure placed upon teachers to fulfill those standards. What kind of impact do you think that this pressure has on the students? Do you think that the pressure that teachers have to fulfill state standards has the same type of effect that the pressure of the NCLB Act has upon schools as well as students? If so, how can the standards be fulfilled, but not at the expense of the students?