Tom Liam Lynch :: New Literacies, New Literatures

Over the next few weeks, I’ll be beginning to put a hypothesis to the test.  We often hear that our current schools are stuck using 19th century models of teaching and learning, that the 21st century student must be prepared for a new globalized economy.  I myself have nodded my head to these claims.  I might even have made them.  And I might make them again.  Before I do, however, I’d like to put them to a test.

What if I closely read and analyzed 19th century textbooks for teaching literature?  Then, what if I conducted a similarly rigorous content analysis of popular online content companies who provide English literature content to schools?  What would be new–or innovative, rigorous, 21st century–and what not? 

My suspicion is that the 19th century textbooks and the 21st century online courses will prove to be remarkably similar.  I’m open, though, to the contrary. 

Are there other questions I’m missing?  What might you yourself expect to see in such a comparison?

Powered by ScribeFire.

Katie Ash recently wrote about online learning and how cost effective it is in K-12 settings.  The debate breaks down like this: While online learning might seem at first to be more cost effective, no detailed studies have proven it; on the one hand, the cost of developing courses can be great, but they can be used by many for a long time; on the other hand, other features of schools like guidance and special services are not available online.  In short, “The answer to the question, experts say, depends on what curriculum is used, whether it is a full-time or part-time program, what state you are in, and how many students you need to serve, among other factors.”

There is something else, however.  A bottom line that Ash and other voices in the piece ignore: quality of learning.

It seems to me that online courses in K-12 settings have many advantages.  Two of the most compelling being that online courses serve to meet students in the cyber-setting that many of our students inhabit and that they do this while also easing the pressure for physical space that drives many public schools–in NYC, for sure–to make difficult curricular decisions. (Principals are told, for example, that any time a classroom is left empty during the day they are not operating “efficiently”.)  These considerations are valid ones.  But what about school-based support for taking online courses?

Imagine students taking most of a course online–whether or not it was designed by their teachers or others is irrelevant for a moment.  Then, on Fridays let’s say, students met for an hour with teachers in their school to talk about their learning meta-cognitively.  The main question being: How are you learning online compared to past and current offline learning experiences?  The goal, in the end, is to make students aware of how they learn best for themselves.

Now, what online courses suggest for certain subjects, though, needs more consideration: What is lost and gained, for example, in the teaching of literature online?  Doesn’t literature require a certain kind of presence and physicality and orality?  Of course, I ask this as an English teacher and as one who has chosen to commit my life to the teaching of literature.  Students, if asked, might well respond that offline learning is, well, just off.