First, Woo-Hoo, today is my 30th post.... only, ummmmm, well, 230 to go? At least I am sticking with it.  Second, if at any time someone reads a post and goes, oh, she should really read......, then post a comment and tell me what I should really read.  All this deciding what to read on my own is too much decision making for me.  Now, on to the "official" post for tonight.

This is once again about Web 2.0 technologies and the teaching of writing: two things that I am the most interested in, but yes, I am getting tired of reading words like pedagogy and Web 2.0.  In tonight's reading, "The Digital Imperative: Making the Case for a 21st-Century Pedagogy" J. Elizabeth Clark discusses the need to move writing into the 21st-Century by teaching our students a digital rhetoric that "emphasizes the civic importance of education, the cultural and social imperative of 'the now,' and the 'cultural software' that engages students in the interactivity, collaboration, ownership, authority, and malleability of texts" (28).  Quite frankly, I couldn't agree with her more.  She also discusses several ways in which she does this in her own classes, including ePortfolios, digital storytelling, interactive gaming (Second Life), and blogs.  Many of these, I have either tried, or use.

But she says something else that really peaked my interest, as I was thinking about this today as I was riding home from DMAC.  She aruges that "the future of writing . . . informs our classrooms and forms a new, "digital" imperative, one that asks how we can reshape our pedagogy with new uses of the technologies that are changing our personal and professional lives" (28).  Focus here, if you will, on "reshape our pedagogy with new uses of the technologies."  Are we, myself included, not always saying that the pedagogy always comes first, and then we adapt technologies to fit our needs pedagogically?  I had epiphany riding home today.  That idea of pedagogy first, technology second, can't always work.  How do I know what technologies will fit a digital pedagogy unless I just start experimenting with using the technologies first? 

I think, perhaps, that these two things have to grow together.  Sometimes the pedagogy will lead the way, at other times the technology will, and at times, they will progress hand-in-hand.  When we thought (back in the 80s and 90s) of computers and composition, we were mainly thinking in terms of word processors and networking our students together.  Then, perhaps, the pedagogy could always come first.  But now, with the explosion of Web 2.0 applications, I believe we have to rethink our approaches to designing our classes around digital literacies.  Yes, if you use a piece of software in your class, and you find it does not fit a pedagogical need, then throw the damn thing out!!  Don't tie yourself to using something that does not serve a purpose.  But don't discount using technology because you cannot conceive of how it might fit into your current pedagogy.  Give it a test drive and see if you don't perhaps find that your pedagogy needs a bit of tweaking, and this is the very thing to do it.  All I'm asking is that we try to expand our pedagogies by expanding our playful side.  We may find that we really do need a makeover.

I have decided to take a break from the book tonight, and yes, last night I did not post.  Between trying to grade papers and finish reviews for a colleagues book proposal, I have been running at full tilt.  So tonight, I did not have the energy to read 30 pages from the book we are working on and decided, instead, to briefly discuss one of the articles for my colleagues book.  I can't give titles yet, because it is not officially printed, or accepted, but I will fill all of this information in later once it is published.  Because the reviews are blind, I can't even give you the name of the author yet.

The author writes about how we need to prepare faculty for engaging 21st century learners and what that means for faculty.  The author is spot on when they point out the short comings of colleges and departments to adequately train faculty or provide them with sufficient professional development.  There are also issues of expecting faculty to teach online and use software with outdated equipment or insufficient bandwidth.  Not to mention the extra work that is involved in teaching a course completely online.

Faculty are also often encouraged, even required, to use course management systems (CMS) that do not fit the pedagogical needs of teaching online.  These systems are always closed and often difficult to interact with.  Not to mention the fact that they often don't function as advertised.

A final point that I will mention here that I wholeheartedly agree with is the lack of incentive for faculty members to take on the extra work load that teaching online ALWAYS requires.  Faculty who are not familiar with online instruction, often believe that anyone who teaches online has it made.  "Hell" they say, "they can teach in their pajamas if they want to."  Well, this is rarely true because we often have to be on campus that day for other obligations, and we figure our chairs or deans would frown on us arriving in PJs to work.  Then there is all the extra work involved in making a course work successfully online.  Everything we want our students to learn online are the same things we want them to learn in the classroom.  We want them to have the same experiences.  In order to make this happen, we have to find a way to upload all of the required information to the online space our students will learn in (the classroom so to speak).  This is not an easy chore and requires a lot of forethought and planning.

So if we do not get paid any extra; and we don't get the training, software, and hardware we need; and we spend tons of extra hours designing our courses and teaching them, then why do we do it?  Why? because we believe in the medium and believe it is important to ensure online learners have as close to the same experience as their brick-and-mortar counterparts. 

So for tonight's post on Jason Whittakers Producing for Web 2.0: A Student Guide, I need to tell you a story.  I was one of the last group of people who went through the Navy's electronics training "old school".  What I mean by that, is that we learned it all.  We learned in months what was equivalent to a 4 year college degree in electronics.  It was intense, but I learned the theory behind how it all worked.  I learned what resistors did, capacitors, transistors, and I learned the formulas for figuring out what size of resistor or other components were needed to make things work.  I learned binary theories, what "and" "nand", "or", and "nor" gates did.  That if you put two "1"s in to a certain kind of gate, you got a "1" out.  I learned how to troubleshoot circuits using specialized equipment down to the component level.  I learned the theories behind crypto gear, I learned how to be an electronics technician "old school".  Soon after I went through, they changed the way they approached electronics training, and they made it about board swapping.  It was supposedly a quicker, more efficient way to troubleshoot in the field.  But what did they learn?  They didn't learn any MacGyver style tricks.  If they troubleshot down to the board and then found they didn't have that board on hand, they couldn't take it any further because they did not have the skills in their toolkit necessary to do so.

So what does any of this have to do with Whittaker's text?  Whitthaker is taking both approaches in his presentation or explanation of developing for the web.  Tonight's chapter, chapter 4, on "Designing for the Web" really drove this point home for me.  He discussed principles, text, links, images, color, tables, forms, and layout, and he basically discusses how these things should be handled using CSS, or cascading style sheets.  But before he explains how to do this, he describes how this would be done via HTML coding, or "old school style".  At one point, Whittaker argues that he "would not recommend trying to construct by hand in raw code, although it is important to understand the HTML in order to troubleshoot and be clear what you are trying to achieve" (70).  This is exactly the type of MacGyver tricks that everyone needs up their sleeves to be able to fix problems with confidence and skill.  Sure, it is easier to swap out a board then it is to find the tiny resistor or transistor that needs to be replaced, but if you do not have the board, you are at a loss.  Knowing the logic and reason behind electronics or HTML coding help you to understand the easier way of doing things, while allowing you to do things "old school" if required.

I never seem to make very smart decisions when it comes to doing things.  I get excited about what it is I want to do and I run with it, and that is exactly what I have done here.  While I perhaps should be grading papers (and believe me, I will be getting to that shortly), I am instead reading chapter one of the first text I decided to run with...Producing for the Web 2.0: A Student Guide.  And I gotta tell you, 14 pages into the chapter and I am DEFINITELY feeling like a student!!

Even though I have 14 more pages to go before I complete this post, I decided to take a moment to jot down, as it were, a couple of things I've noticed so far.  First, I believe this is an excellent text for students.  One reason is the smoothness with which Whittaker repeats things that he knows a student needs to really comprehend before moving on.  After about the second time of seeing statements about how computers can't decipher XML without instructions, I started taking note of every time he would mention this in one way or another.  I have a feeling I've not seen the last of this yet.  Second, Whittaker gives plenty of useful examples to get the point across.  For me, the more I see something, the more it begins to make sense. 

Off to continue with the last 14 pages, so I'll just virtually pause this entry until I am done.

Alright, I'm back with 14 more pages read and a slight headache.  The chapter started out just as I suspected: it is, after all, entitled "Pre-Production".  So it started out discussing the planning of a website, talking to the client, storyboarding it so to speak, but that only lasted for about 7 of the 26 pages.  Then began the in-depth conversation about web technologies, online media toolkits, and setting up a server.  That is a LOT of information to digest in one night.  But again, I have to point out that the information was thorough without being TOO daunting.

Will I retain everything that I read about Ajax, PHP, Apache, Flash, Java, MySQL.... you get the picture.... No, I won't, but when someone mentions it, I'll know I've read it, and I'll have a clue as to what the hell they are talking about.  Something that the Whittaker keeps pointing out is that a lot of this stuff you will never really get into deeply, but you need to at least know what it is and have a clue as to how it works.

With all of that said, tomorrow night's reading may possibly be only a half a chapter, as it is longer than tonight's, and I have papers to grade and clothes to wash.

So stay tuned tomorrow for the next installment of Producing for the Web 2.0: A Student Guide entitled "Designing for the Web," or Dianna comes to terms with the web not being magic like she always thought.

I have decided that over the next couple of weeks I am going to read the introductions to ten books that I ordered or bought while at CCCCs in Louisville Last month.  This will be good practice for me and help me to decided where I want to begin this project.  I had originally said I would finish reading Hamlet on the Holodeck, but I think I want something newer, more cutting edge, something that is current and not two decades old already.  So, while I fully intend on finishing Janet Murray's seminal piece, I don't believe I'll start there.

So, the books I'll be reading the intro's too and making comments are

1. The Language of New Media Design: Theory and Practice by Radan Martinec and Theo van Leeuwen
   
2. Exploring English Grammar: From Formal to Functional by Caroline Coffin, Jim Donohue, and Sarah North
   
3. Multimodality: A Social Semiotic Approach to Contemporary Communication by Gunther Kress
   
4. Digital Literacy for Technical Communication: 21st Century Theory and Practice Ed Rachel Spilka
   
5. Producing for Web 2.0: A Student Guide by Jason Whittaker
   
6. Rhetorically Rethinking Usabiliby: Theories, Practices, and Methodologies Ed Susan Miller-Cochran and Rochelle L. Rodrigo
   
7. Lingua Fracta: Towards a Rhetoric of New Media by Collin Gifford Brooke
   
8. Going Wireless: A Critical Exploration of Wireless and Mobile Technologies for Composition Teachers and Researchers (wow, what a title) Ed Amy C. Kimme Hea
   
9. Digital Tools in Composition Studies: Critical Dimensions and Implication Eds Ollie O. Oviedo, Joyce R. Walker, and Byron Hawk
   
10. Webbing Cyberfeminist Practice: Communities, Pedagogies, and Social Action Eds Kristine Blair, Radhika Gajjala, and Christine Tulley

So, I will begin reading the intros to these this week.  I am excited about officially beginning this project and hope that reading these intros will lead me to a good start.