Reflection on the last class

The emerging use of technology breaks the barriers of societies and different communities as well as gender, age, and social status of individuals. Literacy, therefore in modern contexts, are affiliated with a mindset that is very different from that of the old world. The inter-networked technologies enable the information to spread out through various medium, allowing every individual who has access to the Internet to become expert in the areas chosen. Expertise and authority are no longer limited to certain group of people, but are “dispersed and collective” (Lankshear, 2006). Before the frequent use of the Internet, one has to ask everybody around, look into the encyclopedia, or physically go somewhere in order to get certain kind of information. Take my grandma for example. When she doesn’t feel well, she usually asked people around to find out what type of disease she has. Then she needs to find out the type and sources of her illness in order to make reservation with the right doctor, the doctor specifically associated with her illness. Next, she has to call all her friends to ask who is the most prestige doctor in that field. Finally, she has to call the hospital to make reservation. Since she has hearing problems, she usually asks her kids or other relatives to do so for her. Nowadays she usually types in the symptoms online to search for articles related to her illness. As she determines which type of doctors she should see, she goes to the forum and discusses with other people about which doctor is the best in that field. When she sets her mind in a certain doctor, she goes on to make a reservation through the Internet. Every piece of information she needs is a click away. She is really happy about the invention of the technology. The Internet access enables her to understand her disease by reading information online and chatting with people. She feels a lot less isolated and helpless.

I like the idea that brought up by the article “Smart Mobs: The power of the mobile many.” The author mentions that though computer and the Internet were designed by people, the way people use them are not predetermined. This reminds me of a video clip that I saw on the Youtube.



In the clip, individual members belonging to diverse sociocultural groups, holding different thinkings, converge on a specific location from all direction simultaneously to either have fun or to express their dissatisfaction of the “rip-off” business of AF who advertises their products through the teenage subcultures: loud disco music, spaces with dim lights, vintage styles, etc.

Multiliteracies in practice

One thing brought up in the handout by Dr. Bomer is very interesting. He mentions that everyone has a “limited supply of attention” and each individual has to plan where and how to use it. Because of the easy access to information, one is likely to be overwhelmed by all types of information available and be distracted from what he/she really wants to focus on in the first place. Spending too much time on reading unrelated information while searching for the necessary information may be my personal itch. Time fleets away like a flash, and nothing big has accomplished.
My attention span has become so short that I couldn’t focus on one single text at a time. The way the information spread out through the Internet has changed the reading habits of people. In the old times, people do not need to pay effort to focus on one single piece of information since they tend to get access to one thing at a time. When too much information is available, one will need to manage his/her time and attention to screen superfluous information and spot pivotal elements.

In the article “A pedagogy of multiliteracies: Designing social futures,” the New London Group addresses that the trend of civic pluralism fosters the change of the content of public rights and pedagogical orientation of literacy. Cultural and linguistic diversity was no longer viewed as “abnormal” or “non-standard,” but was valued as powerful social resources for students who may equip themselves for multicultural niche markets in the future. This reminds me of the issue of accent that has been brought up constantly in recent years. When learning a foreign language, most people tend to believe that only when individuals who can speak a language without an accent are good learners or speakers of that language. “Without an accent” here I refer to an accent of a target language influenced by a speaker’s native language. Take English as an international language for example. There are an immense number of people speaking this language and, for those who learn English as a second or foreign language; their native tone would more or less affect their accent. The nonnative accent used to be viewed as a stigma, while in the New World, some people, especially humanity researchers and ethnographers, start to advocate the concept of accent as a representation of personal or ethical identity and idiosyncrasy. However, we need to be cautious that the new concept may fall into the category of tokenistic pluralism and people having nonnative accents still have difficulty in being recognized.

Reflection on "Rereading the signs"

Siegel (2006)’s article points out the important role technology plays in combining threads of literacy practices and development. New context and purpose have been created through the use of technology, and in turn, new notion of authorship and publishing are blooming. Multimodal transformations of literacy has made linear representation of texts become more interactive and reader-friendly. An emergent path of literacy value the symbol systems, emphasizing the importance of sign-making and sign-reading in a variety of modes. This reminds me of my writing class in elementary school. Each student got a writing notebook with a blank column on the top of the page and lines at the bottom of the pages. The teacher always encouraged us to draw something first on the blank part of the notebook, and based on the drawings, we could tell our own stories in written language. The drawing images, compared to texts, are more concrete, which enable little kids to develop their ideas with little constraints of their literacy proficiency. In middle schools and high schools, the multimodal literate behaviors were no longer valued by school teachers. Most of the time, students were asked to write on a topic given by teacher without any visual or audio support. First of all, it may be difficult for students to interpret the topic itself. In the same vein, students were only allowed to express themselves through conventional text system and be evaluated in the same mode, which privileges written language above all other symbol systems and indirectly limit students’ development to only adult-defined literacy.

Literacy in multimodal environments

When the notions of habits of mind and the ubiquitous use of PowerPoint are brought up together, I immediately thought of a friend who likes to use PowerPoint to take notes, structure his ideas, ask questions, and answer his own questions. It doesn’t make sense to me in the first place. However, after reading Adams (2006)’ article, I suddenly figure out that PowerPoint is not simply a software people could use for presentation purposes, but can be used for concept construction and note-taking. According to Adams, the blank default slides invite authors to think of a title, and add information in a bulleted format. The process of creating the slides simulates a series of steps involved to plot the mental image and develop cognitive knowledge. Furthermore, the software allows people to brainstorm in a default framework, providing a sense of security for people who have little ideas about how to get started. The invention of PowerPoint also reminds me of the writing technology exhibition in Harry Ransom center earlier. Several brainstorming sentences were written on the radii of a circle-shape paper. In the same vein, the circle shaped paper creates a structure and format for authors who could fill in the space provided.

I was also intrigued by the idea of significant insignificance. Adams (2006) points out that the use of bullet tool makes the representation of all information signified, and in turn, makes relative significance indistinctive. Knowledge presented in bulleted format is inclined to be embedded several layers deep and homogenized. Also, in order to incorporate the content into the pre-set PowerPoint framework, certain unimportant information inevitably need to be stressed to complete the overall picture. My experience of making slides echoes this point. I need to think about giving a title of every text, and add extraneous information to fill in the blank space of slides even though there is only one point worth mentioning. Another pitfall of slides is that information needs to be displayed on a single projected 4:3 rectangle. It is unlikely to employ complex table or graph for they requires more space. Authors would inexorably suffer information loss or information split.

When reading about the IM article, Lewis (2005) mentioned about people would have to “sound” right in writing. Because they couldn’t see each other, they would adopt some emoticons during the conversation or some expressions such as “lol” or capitalize every words for the purpose of emphasizing. People sometimes would use “iirc (if I recall it correctly)” or “btw (by the way) to save some typing labor. Posing occurs a lot given a social sphere excludes the body. My friend Jasmine logged on her boy friend’s account and send instant messages to every girl on his body list in order to find out whether her boy friend was cheating on her. In terms of language learning, the enactment of multiple identities through the use of online chatting allows students learning a foreign language to interact with native speakers of target language with fewer barriers. First of all, they could practice the language without take the pressure of face-to-face communication. Similarly, the chances of being discriminated become fewer. Second, the instant message provides students more reaction time than real-life communication. They can sound “smart and sophisticated” even though they are not fluent speakers since they can get access to information they need online before they actually type the sentences. IM demands people who can draw on the intertextual chains that exist through the textual history of each interaction in a larger textual network (New London Group, 1996, 2000). When one is not able to shift his or her performance instantaneously from one audience to another, he or she would have problem carrying conversations with people.

The Sleeper Curve in TV shows

Based on Johnson’s article “the sleeper curve,” a new trend appears in the mass media has turned the earthbound entertainment into a visual stimulus enhancing cognitive complexity through intellectual labor involved while the audience enjoys and makes sense of the show. One thing brought up was the texture and substance of realism in the making of new media. Johnson argues that the emerging public opinion about the “negative” influence of media pertaining to ethical ambiguity should be taken in a new perspective—the representation of how the world is exercised and how putative audience can interpret the phenomenon.
Johnson’s statement touches the issue of media rating. Though the media reflecting the ethnical ambiguity in today’s world may help audience make sense of their cultural experiences as a member of social mechanism, it is difficult to monitor who the audiences are and how they interpret the scenes they see. When these two factors are not determined, it is difficult to say whether TV shows or video games have positive or negative impact on people of different ages and, in turn, mental ages. People may see a violent scene, think about the issues of social disorder, and take it as a moral lesson. However, there are still people who believe that it is cool to be violent just like what the “heroes” do in the show. This echoes another issue of how the director approaches the realism in a TV show or film. Take a crime scene for example. The director can portray a bloody fight among characters and manipulate the dark side of human beings in a noble way; the director can also engage audience in a mental labor and complex social networks by focusing on characters who manage to use limited resources to solve problems.

The dialogue on the show “Desperate Housewives” involves several textual and substance cues that enable audience to get the joke by making senses of bits and bites of info embedded in the scene.

[Mike walks back down the driveway towards the car.]
Edie: Hi Mike. Susan.
Susan: Edie. [Sighs as she walks down to join Mike.]
Mike: Hey, I’m sorry about your house. How you holding up?
Edie: Alright, I guess. [Opens the car door and steps out.] Oh, is somebody having a party?
Mike: No, Susan’s just throwing me one of her traditional welcome-to-the-neighborhood dinners. Only I’m cooking. And having it at my house.
Edie: [Laughs] Traditional. Hm. I didn’t get one.
Susan: Oh, it’s sort of a new tradition.
Mike: Well it won’t be anything fancy, just a little home cooking.
Edie: Mmm, that sounds so good.
Narrator: Susan suddenly had an awful feeling in the pit of her stomach.
Edie: I’ve been having nothing but fast food lately. [Rummages through Mike’s grocery bags, taking out a grape and eating it seductively, staring at Mike.]
Narrator: As if she was watching an accident in slow motion. She knew it would happen, but was powerless to stop it.
[Mike turns around to look at Susan, cocking his head as if to ask if it’s okay.]
Susan: Edie, would you like to join us for dinner?
Edie: Oh that’s so sweet. No, I don’t wanna intrude. Three’s a crowd.
Mike: No, it’s not like that. I mean, Susan’s bringing Julie.
Susan: It’s not like that. The more the merrier.
Edie: Well, this’ll be fun.
Mike: Alright. Tomorrow night. We’ll eat at six.
Edie: Great. Oh, and Susan.
Susan: Yeah.
Edie: This’ll make up for the dinner that you never threw me.
Susan: Right. [Laughs feebly]
Mike: I haven’t, ah, told her we were having steak. She’s not like a vegetarian, is she?
Susan: Oh, no, no. No, Edie’s definitely a carnivore.
There are some flashing arrows occur when the narrator describe the feelings of the main character Susan. Also, the context of the conversation allows audience to further interpret the comment “Edie’s definitely a carnivore” in a nonliteral way. In this dialogue, Edie is an uninvited guest to Susan because they compete over Mike. Susan’s emotion is changed from embarrassment to powerlessness as Edie asks about dinner and finally joins her dinner with Mike. When Mike mentions about a traditional welcome-to-the-neighborhood dinner thrown by Susan, Edie knows the dinner is only an excuse for Susan to get closer to Mike. She purposefully points out that she did not get one. Susan justifies herself by saying “it’s sort of a new tradition.” The way she puts it is also contradictory because a “tradition” should be a custom that has existed for a long time while “new tradition” is difficult to define. Near the end of the conversation, Edie shows her interest in joining the dinner by saying “I’ve been having nothing but fast food lately.” Edie goes off-record, making statement nebulously and leaving the interpretation to the listeners. Thus, Susan and Mike could either invite her over or not. When Susan finally invites Edie over, Edie replies “Oh that’s so sweet” with exaggerate interest with Susan’s invitation. At the end of the conversation, when Mike asks Susan whether Edie is a vegetarian, Susan replies “No, Edie’s definitely a carnivore.” Susan does not only mean Edie eats meat but also implies that she is aggressive in competing over Mike, the “meat.” Susan’s comment about Edie’s diet habit would be interpreted different, may be literally, if the same utterance is put in different situations. The meaning of “carnivore” is constructed based on the audience’s previous knowledge, their tacit knowledge as well as their social-cultural recognition of the context.

Marxism, intellectual property, and Education

It is interesting to examine the present educational system through the lenses of Marxist and Capitalist thoughts. Shannon (2000) reminds us that under the logic of capitalist, everything including curricular designs, learning materials, instructional approaches, and evaluation procedures should be organized in a similar fashion, making education works like enterprise that ensures students, like products, to turn out to have the preconceived and fixed capacities bureaucracy sets in. Scripted program in senior high is very common in Taiwan as well. The force of high-stake exam such as college entrance exam for all senior high school students gives rise to the standardized textbooks, curriculum and class activities. Not only teachers but students are highly influenced by such system. Teachers are forced to negotiate their beliefs for teaching to match the social norms and avoid any dispute such as being blamed that they do not do a good job in teaching based on the scores of students. On the other hand, students would not pay much attention to teachers’ teaching if the content is not related to the high-stake tests. A number of drawbacks have been identified. Students lose their creativity because of the scripted structures of teaching. To be recognized as good students in mainstream society, they are trained to be test-taking machines instead of reflective and critical thinkers.
The notion of intellectual labor brought up by Spigelman (1998) makes me think about the issue of the criterion to measure textual ownership. In an academia where the importance of copyright cannot be overemphasized, each researcher strives to establish his/her ownership for texts. Thus whenever collaboration is involved during the process of composing, it is inevitable for people to argue who is more qualified to be the first author. Theoretically, people who contribute the most would be the first author, while in reality, it is not so easy to determine who accomplish the most because both quantity and quality of the duties need to be considered when making such judgment. The issue goes back to the discussion of the definition of originality. Do people do the most writing is the first author? Or people who come up with the idea? People who do the data analysis and collection? What if these duties were accomplished by different people? A piece of writing cannot be accomplished without any of those. After all, there are no rigorous rules clarifying the levels of importance of these duties. The debate of copyright would continue. In terms of the idea/expression dichotomy of ownership, Edward’s responses about the issue stood out for me. He believed that adopting the expressions used by other native English speakers can convey his ideas more effectively. As a nonnative English speaker, I feel that there’s always a language barrier that I couldn’t overcome when I need to express my opinions toward things. Thus, I would usually try to build a personal corpus of literary work for me to refer to when it comes to writing. The process of learning to express myself may invade the concept of copyright that “unacknowledged appropriate of either ideas or words is deemed unacceptable” while it is an inevitable process of language learning.

Tools and Literacy

At the time I went to college, the emergent use of technology, namely computer, has make profound differences in the form, structure and quality of writing and written text. I noticed that with the word processors, people could easily edit their paragraph, either adding new ideas or deleting some extraneous ones. The quality of the article, in some way, may be enhanced due to the convenience of the editing, while the repeated editing may increase the possibility of incongruity, and incoherence of the overall article.

As I read a passage in Bomer’s (2003) article about how kids viewed the pillows not as tools to relax themselves but as toys that they can move and toss them around, I was intrigued that the author held a vision that the muddled incident is a process of learning and can possibly pique students motives of writing and allow them to develop ideas for writing. In my writing class at elementary school, we were usually given a topic and had to write about it with little support (e.g. explanation of the topic, some brainstorming steps, etc.) Both the surface structure – handwriting, punctuation, style, and grammar - and content were highlighted. Based on Bomer (2003), the ideality of the tool that comes out of my writing teacher is very different from the one the in the present article. Her edition of cultural practice was to have students do intentional things – sitting in the classroom, behaving themselves and write as instructed.

Vygotsky’s notion of pivot in connection with play stands out to me. He postulates that children have to detach an object from its meaning in order to play. Through the process of attributing meanings to objects and actions, and meanings that are not presented in objects or actions, children would be able to conceptualize abstract concepts, ideas and formulate new modes of action and thoughts. It reminds me of a scene I saw in the playground the other day. Two little girls were sitting by a table. On the table, a tea pot and tea cups were displayed. Though I did not see any food on the table, the kids seemed to pretend they were having an afternoon tea. Also, both of them kept talking to an “invisible” guest on an empty seat. Though we were not able to see their imaginary guest friend, they were very polite and using all those gestures that people consider the way the guest should be treated. A set of tea cup and an empty chair, in these girls’ minds, symbolized their guest. These two girls attributed meaning that are not intrinsically presented in the situation and brought a surplus of meaning to the context. By taking on a subjective role, a child learns by playing, symbolizing and finally elaborating their ideas through spoken or printed words.

When we were talking about the use of concrete tools such as mechanical pencil for literacy development, I thought about different types of ball pens that can meet various needs of writers. Two years ago when I first came to the U.S., I brought a lot of ball pens with small and sharp tips because my experience of using ball pens made in the U.S. was awful: my handwriting became messy and untidy. However, when I came to the U.S., I suddenly found out those ball pens I brought with me became less useful, meaning that my English handwriting looked better when the words were written by using ball pens with dull tips. I realized that because writing alphabets requires fewer strokes while writing characters takes more strokes. When the tip of a pen is sharp, writing with it can clearly represent the complicated strokes in a character; and when the tip of a pen is dull, writing with it can enlarge, and deepen alphabets. Also, the ways we determine the tidiness or beauty of the handwriting vary from culture to culture. A simple tool like ball pen we are using everyday to facilitate the formulation of the ideas, elaboration of thoughts, and structuring of the texts to share with the audience across time and space can serve different functions and cultural practices. This is something that I would never have thought about if I didn’t read this article.