Facework on Facebook as a new literacy practice

• laid out what Facebook is/how it's used
• Interviewed people about their usage of Facebook
• Researcher was shown the Facebook profiles of the people that were interviewed
• Analysis of each Facebook profile & how they are used

I found this interesting because I might want to analyze Twitter for my ethnography, so this shows me a way that analyzing a social media website can be done. 

En Los Dos Idiomas

• 5 yrs. in Chicago, 6 weeks in Mexico
• Participant-observation & open-ended interviews with adult members of the families in the study & audiotaped informal discourse in the homes of members and in public settings in the neighborhood
• Families in the study are Mexicano immigrants (approx. 45 people) 
• working class - blue collar jobs
• limited education - 0-8 years of schooling
• Compadrazgo: refers to the Mexican system of godparentlike relationships that function as a reciprocal exchange network to facilitate economic survival and provide emotional and social support. 
• provides a means in which traditions are easily passed
• crucial in urban areas such as Chicago
• The individuals who were raised in Chicago have more schooling than those raised in Mexico since those raised in Mexico had to help support the household
• Literacy skills generally correlate with level of education, but some people had personal motivation to learn & use literacy, such as religious reasons and personal obligations (maintain correspondence with people in Mexico)
• Learning literacy lirico
• picking up literacy informally from others who used only spoken language to pass on the knowledge of writing
• Would learn to read and write from magazines or cigarette cartons
• when people need these skills, they will be motivated to learn them - school isn't necessary
• bare bones approach - don't know grammar, etc. only know letters
• Social nature of literacy learning
• Maintain personal relationships
• the learning process itself is social
• Literacy skills are needed for shopping, paying bills, and jobs
• Education doesn't only enhance literacy skills, but it enables people to deal with people more effectively and to handle life's problems
• *I found this very interesting. Education improves social skills immensely because you're always surrounded by people. 

The Ethnography of Literacy - John F. Szwed

• Everyone seems to agree that literacy is a necessity in the modern world.
• Associated with earning a living, achieving goals, etc.
• Particularly in the US, illiteracy is a cause for poverty.
• Shifts in reading habits around the world
• US: the reading & publishing of novels is declining, reading of poetry and plays is at almost zero level, non-fiction is increasing
• What are reading and writing for?
• How is language used by people?
• Goal of education is to produce a society who are equally competent in reading and writing.
• No society has yet to do this.
• *even those who are educated have different literacies. The CEO of a company probably doesn't have the same set of literacy skills as a doctor does.
• Schools don't take into account what students read outside the classroom
• Ex: someone who might not be able to read assigned texts could be reading baseball record books at home & have a lot of skill in that area.
• *sometimes it's hard to read assigned texts - they could be boring or confusing and if people don't have the motivation to do that, they might be seen as illiterate just because teachers don't see what students are doing at home.
• No set definition of what "literature" is. 
• Public literacy vs. private literacy
• If a school assumes a child reads at home, even though the child may not, the child will be at a disadvantage compared to other kids who do read at home.
• Ability to read a sign is a different set of skills - ex: stop signs all look the same, so if you don't know how to read, but someone tells you a red octagon means stop, you'll know that every time you see one you need to stop. 
• Literacy varies in socioeconomic classes, age groups, ethnic groups, etc.
• We have inherited the idea that "mass" everything is good (mass-education, mass-literacy, etc.)
• *our society has such a need to categorize things, so we just categorize people into groups, when it's so much more than that. Sometimes things don't fit into neat categories.

Street - At Last....

• New Literacy Studies (NLS): approaches focus on the everyday meanings and uses of literacy in specific cultural contexts and link directly to how we understand the work of literacy in educational contexts; represents a shift in perspective on the study and acquisition of literacy, from the dominant cognitive model, with its emphasis on reading, to a broader understanding of literacy practices in their social and cultural contexts; people who support NLS advocate an ethnographic perspective. 
• Autonomous model of literacy: literacy itself will have effects on other social and cognitive practices, irrespective of social conditions and cultural interpretations of literacy.
• Ideological model of literacy: culturally sensitive view of literacy practices. Literacy is a social practice, not simply a technical and neutral skill.
• People who are labelled "illiterate" are literate in specific contexts which they need to be literate in. 
• Ex: a construction worker may not be able to read, but he is literate in the skills he needs to do his job. People who can read may be illiterate in the field of construction. 
• Literacy doesn't just apply to being able to read and write.
• Literacy event: any occasion in which a piece of writing is integral to the nature of the participants' interactions and their interpretive processes.
• Literacy practices: a means of focusing upon the social practices and conceptions of reading and writing.
• We need to rethink, redefine, and redesign language and literacy in the classroom to meet the contemporary needs and skills of students.

A World Without Print

• Written language is different from oral
• oral language is employed within a shared physical context, but written language is the opposite; usually the writer and the reader don't share the same physical space. 
• Written  language is used  to make a permanent thought or argument or story. 
• Written language & oral language are usually worded differently
• Written: "Down the hill ran the green, scaly dragon."
• Oral: "The dragon ran down the hill. He was green and had scales."
• Effect on Donny & Timmy
• they don't understand the need for print. In the example where Donny makes a kite & shows Victoria Purcell-Gates, she says she could help him write a book on how to make a kite. However, he doesn't understand why he can't just show everyone how to do it.

Peter Elbow

Arguments for teaching nonacademic discourse in freshman writing classes
1. very few students will have to write academic discourse after college.
         -the best test of a writing course is whether it makes students more likely to use writing in their
          lives by choice.
         -if colleges only teach academic discourse, they will fail their students in helping them to write
          by choice throughout their lives
2.  take a larger view of human discourse
          -students leave college unable to find words to render their experience
          -discourse that renders often yields important new cognitive insights
3. nonacademic discourse helps students produce good academic discourse
           -"The use of academic discourse often masks a lack of genuine understanding. When students
            write about something only in the language of the textbook or the discipline, they often                       distance or insulate themselves from experiencing or really internalizing the concepts they are             allegedly learning. Often the best test of whether a student understands something is if she can             translate it out of the discourse of the textbook and the discipline into everyday, experiential,               anecdotal terms."
**The above quote is proof of the fact that colleges produce really good bullshitters. Students learn to write papers using the language of their textbooks and this language makes their papers sound as if they know what they're talking about, but if you ask the writers of these papers, most of them will have no idea what any of it means. Teachers believe that since students are using the "right" words, they understand them, but that's simply not the case.

-Professors are not qualified to teach academic discourse if they don't have experience in the specific area.
**So should students who do not have experience in academic discourse be required to write in it?

-Academic discourse's language is more confusing and convoluted than it has to be.
"For example, academic discourse leads Berlin in just one paragraph to say "full significance of their pedagogical strategies" rather than "implications of how they teach"; "mode of operation" rather than "how they act."

-Academic discourse can exclude ordinary people.
         -by using formal language, academics are basically saying that they are professionals who don't
          invite conversation with nonprofessionals.
                -Ex: doctors don't say "thumb bone," they use the correct medical term.

-We want to impress people, so we use fancy language to show off.

Unpackaging Literacy

• Is there a writing crisis? If there is, is it a matter of national concern? 
• Literacy has produced a great divide in human modes of thinking.
• The "writing process" is identified with the production of written discourse or text. 
• Transactional writing: writing in which it is taken for granted that the writer means what he says and can be challenged for its truthfulness and its logicality. 
• Most of our notions of what writing is about is tied up with school-based writing. 
• Most writing in secondary schools is transactional.T
• This approach binds the intellectual and social significance of writing too closely to the image of the professional and academic member of society. 
• Promotes the idea that writing outside of school has little importance. 
• Vai script isn't taught in schools – completion of lessons isn't the endpoint of learning, like seems to be in American schools.
• Unlike American society, writing in Vai serves a variety of social functions (like letter-writing and record keeping). 

This chapter leads me to believe that we must somehow change our school system so writing is looked at in not just an academic way. Maybe teachers could be less stringent about requirements for papers so that writing seems more fun to students. That way, they'd want to write outside of school as opposed to now where students are so sick of writing boring research papers that they've filled their personal writing quota.