Post #11- Becoming Critical Consumers and Producers of Text; Teaching about language, power, and text

Becoming Critical Consumers and Producers of Text

It is quite clear there is a difference between Web 1.0 and 2.0.  Web 1.0 allows us to be mostly consumers of information, finding resources and other information online.  Web 2.0 is much more different; not only can we consume information, we can actually be "authors" of some sort.  The creation of blogs and sites where people can write reviews or comment on news articles allows us to be authors and write our opinions on whatever we like, whether it's a product we've bought, a news article that strikes a chord, or just writing down our thoughts and opinions on whatever.  I liked the teacher that used Writer's Workshop in her classroom using different types of Web 2.0 tools, from Comic Creator to blogs.  While reading the article, I definitely think that using the blogs was much more successful than using Comic Creator.  At least with the blogs, Kristin could monitor the students' work and even put in her own thoughts and feelings or postings about book she's read.  I think that was a very good idea; if students can't get a thought out or don't know what to write, having their teacher write a posting about something they've read, it would allow students to respond to the posting.  This way it keeps the classroom conversations going and enhances what they're reading about or learning about in the classroom setting.

Teaching about language, power, and text

From reading this article, I definitely think the following quote was true: "Classroom literacy practices that involve students in reading supplementary texts, reading multiple texts, reading from a resistant perspective, and producing countertexts all help develop an understanding that text is given meaning, as opposed to containing meaning (pg 487)." I think that all too often, students are hesitant to read books that make them think outside the box or aren't exactly within their comfort zone or aren't part of their interests.  This makes them more leery of reading something in school as part of an ELA class or a history class.  I liked the part of the article that discussed students reading a variety of texts that had the same theme.  This exposes different types of books to students so they can see the differences and similarities of the way the books are written while they have the same themes or topics within them.  Students are able to tell which books they like from doing this kind of reading activity.  "Reading multiple texts encourages students to understand authorship as situated activity.  Students can consider who constructed the text, when, where, why, and the values on which it was based.  By experiencing different treatments of the same topic or event, students begin to recognize that text is not "true" in any absolute sense but a rendering as portrayed by an author (pg 493)."  I think this quote was very important and basically sums up the whole article.  It is very important for students to read multiple text so they can understand different points of views, and compare and contrast books that have the same themes or similar topics.