will they truly see past the power structures that they've been locked inside for 12 years or more? Will we?

in fifteen weeks? no, not really, although some of the discussions i know you have in class (& assigning gatto!) must help steer them towards at least beginning to see that those structures are there. in any case, we don't really want them to, do we?. some basic functions of our jobs--to give them grades that equal university currency for doing what the university wants us to do in that room w/them--depend on them continuing to participate & buy-in even as they start questioning.

weblogging with students is like any other way of teaching them more about the potential they have to communicate with and create-while-in-communication-with the social & technological web around them, in that it should be enabling and opportunity-offering. we don't have to entirely dissolve institutional barriers to give them a tool for beginning to work around them--and with them, since in many ways i'm sure those divisions serve our students' interests too. we don't have to completely understand the potential of the network to put it in their hands, or teach them everything there is to know about it, or expect it to be entirely different from other classroom-spaces just because it goes outside the walls (while still staying inside the grade book), in order for it to be a valuable direction to turn students' attention.

the way i see teaching in general--and so this as one instance of the opportunity to do it--is that our real job isn't to make sure, by the end of x days, weeks, whatever, that they all know anything. what i want to be sure of is that they know something new about finding things out, about the implications of what they do, about the potentials for exploring ways & implications. and that's what interests me about this.

I completely agree with you Tyra. I have tried to kid myself over the years that I have removed the power-dynamic in the classroom with a charged community and student led discussion. But that grade always comes in (I used to think at the end) but it is really always there under the surface.

So, I like that idea about students finding something new by the end of our time with them, and blogging seems an interesting way of doing it. I was thinking as I read Walker's piece about how the links and trackbacks help to make writing more of a conversation, and I thought perhaps the new thing that blogging can teach is a different relationship to the texts they use when they write. Something about disjarring notions of citation and plagiarism, like Ty said about productive forms of pastiche where students don't just cut up others texts but see the whole as part of their intellectual process. Not quite sure how that would look, but I think it is worth exploring.

Gatto's piece. Wow.

We could read his argument as the dark unconscious of literacy, I think:

"It only takes about 50 contact hours to transmit basic literacy and math skills well enough that kids can be self-teachers from then on. The cry for 'basic skills' practice is a smokescreen behind which schools pre-empt the time of children for twelve years and teach them the six lessons I've just taught you."

And I don't know if you thought of this and the Postman material as companion pieces, but Postman's technology caveats can start us in the direction of asking what the dark unconscious of network literacy might look like.

Part of what has been rolling around in my head without much shape relates to the last part of your comment, Jen. In a world of networked writing (like blogging), linking other's writing and extending it by comment but not necessarily by summary or analysis, what sort of writing "products" can we envision for students? Without dropping into the process/product debate, I'm wondering how as a teacher you could ever actually trace the "work" students do in the networked world of writing without reducing that work to a reflective paper or other "traditional" form of writing. I don't have an answer to this, it's just a little nagging question.

Another interesting thought I had last night had to do with etiquette, ethics and plagiarism. In the networked world, particularly with collaborative sites, it seems that a new level of potential plagiarism is achieved, but more importantly, a new ability to alter the writing of another in a public space. I suppose there are some safeguards against that, but it also seems that just like being able to edit a post after comments have been made, it is possible to edit other's writing. That seems to be a whole new category to explore in the context of academic honesty.