Week Nine

I have found this experience of participating in an online community both interesting and informative. Over the past eight weeks, I have learned a great deal about digital citizenship and how important it is to demonstrate positive digital citizenship online. I thoroughly enjoyed participating in a community concerning literature. I spent a large amount of time reading posts in this forum made by fellow teachers. It was interesting to observe how teachers responded to one another, especially veteran teachers. I found that in the education portion of the literature forum, negative digital citizenship was often being displayed by veteran teachers, who appeared to think they knew much more about a given topic than naive young teachers. This is something that I will definitely be aware of in future years as I become a veteran teacher. That being said, I very much enjoyed this assignment and the time I was able to spend learning and discussing literature and strategies for teaching literature. This is a forum that I plan to stay connected with as I have found it to be a wonderful resource for my study and teaching of literature.

In addition to observing the digital citizenship in a forum of my choosing, I enjoyed keeping a weekly blog. I have always wanted to keep a blog, but I haven't ever found the time to actually do it. Being required to blog on a weekly basis allowed me to prove to myself that I can make the time to sit down and write about a specific topic if I put my mid to it. I think blogging is something that is appealing to me because I enjoy writing and I think that writing about something that is particularly interesting to a person can be extremely beneficial. I definitely want to try to incorporate blogging into my English curriculum in the future. Currently, my students write in journals multiple times a week, but I think blogging would be a powerful experience for them and enable us to engage in productive dialogue conceding digital citizenship.

Thanks for reading my blog!

Week Eight

Last week I commented in a thread about the Lord of the Flies and shared my opinion on the most significant Biblical allusion in the novel. I attempted to give an answer that was different than the answers that members had previously given. Unfortunately, my comment did not receive any feedback. I assume this is because five members had posted in the thread before me. I have found that threaded discussions seem to lose their hype quickly in this forum unless some sort of controversy is sparked.

I decided that I would start my own thread this week in the “General Teaching” discussion section. I wanted to ask fellow literature teachers their feeling about a topic that they would be passionate about. This was the question I posted: “I have a question for all of my fellow literature teachers. What are your thoughts on transitioning to ebooks in the classroom? My school is in the process of adopting tablets and I am having to decide how I am going to require students to purchase their novels next year. I personally love holding an actual book, but I realize ebooks may be cheaper for students. What are your thoughts?” Since posting this question on Sunday night, I have received two responses. One teacher said, “The transition to ebooks has been amazing! Students rarely come to class without a way to access the text and they are able to easily refer back to texts that we covered earlier in the school year. Paper books are the way of the past.” I was encouraged by the way this teacher shared their experience and opinion with me in a positive way. Another member, who I am assuming is a teacher, said, “I will NEVER allow ebooks into my classroom. They will have to throw me out with my paperback novels.” Though this user disagreed with my opinion, I felt they were able to share their thoughts in a comical and non-threatening manner. I feel that both of these forum members demonstrated positive digital citizenship. I am excited to see what other members will have to say about this issue.

Week Seven

Over the past few days, I have spent some time observing conversation and digital citizenship in a number of different forum areas. During third quarter of this school year, I am going to be focusing on symbolism and Biblical allusions with my English 10 class as we read Lord of the Flies. I came across some really fascinating ideas about the Biblical allusions used in Lord of the Flies. I read through a long threaded discussion that was initiated by this simple question: “What do you consider the most significant Biblical allusion found in Golding’s novel?” I thought this was a bit of a strange question given the allegorical nature of the novel. There are many Biblical allusions and the story is deep rooted in symbolism. I don’t believe one Biblical allusion is necessarily more significant than another, but the question is posed in way that welcomes opinion. This was obvious as I read through the thread of responses. Members were voicing their opinions, but in a way that was respectful of the comments of others. I decided to respond to this initial question in hope that I would have a better experience than the last time I responded to a post. My response was this: “I am not sure that one Biblical allusion can be more significant than another because each one is so intricately woven into the story and serves a specific purpose. If I had to choose one Biblical allusion that seems to focus my attention on above the rest, I think I would choose the beast, which alludes to Satan in the book of Revelation. It seems significant that the beast, which is found within the boys themselves, alludes to Satan.” I decided to focus on the beast because the few members that commented before me seemed to be in agreement that “the lord of the flies” was the most significant Biblical allusion. I thought I would see if my post would draw attention since it was different than the others. I posted my response on Monday and no one has responded to it so far. I am interested to see if I receive any feedback and if that feedback will be positive or negative.

Week Six

About two weeks ago, I posted a comment in response to a 12^th grade English teacher who decided that he was going to remove classic literature from his classroom in order to teach more modern to engage his students. My comment was the second response to his initial post and not extremely controversial. For this reason, it seems like my comment was lost among a threaded discussion that quickly became very heated. There seem to be teachers on both sides of this argument that are very passionate about the literature that they have chosen to use in their classroom. The one response that I received was this: “How can you prove that contemporary novels do not belong in the classroom if you have never taught them?” I am assuming that this response was written by a teacher who has chosen to teach more modern works. I can’t decide how I feel about their question. I totally understand what they are suggesting. Of course there is no way that I can prove teaching classics is more effective than teaching modern literature, but I feel like posting a question such as this in response to my comment is a bit condescending. Throughout this threaded discussion, there were multiple examples of both positive and negative digital citizenship, and ultimately all users were doing was defending their own opinion on the issue. My favorite post from the discussion was this: “Does it really matter what novels students are reading? Teachers can cover standards utilizing a number of different literary works. As long as students are being taught the skills they need to analyze literature and effectively communicate, they can read anything.” I thought that this was a valid and tasteful statement. I really appreciated that this user was able to make a point without being arrogant or offensive.

This week, in addition to reading through this threaded discussion, I spent some time reading through discussions surrounding the Romantic period in England. I am preparing to introduce Frankenstein to my seniors and wanted to find some poems that illustrate the sublime to have them read before beginning the novel. As I read through discussions of Romantic poems, mostly the work of Shelley and Byron, I found that for the most part members demonstrate positive digital citizenship when they are simply stating facts. It appears to be when members begin stating opinions that are contrary to the initial post that negative digital citizenship comes into play. Though I came across some fascinating discussions, I decided not to comment again this week.