DRAFT-WORK IN PROGRESS

New London Group: “A Pedagogy of Multiliteracies Designing Social Futures”:

"As educators attempt to address the context of cultural and linguistic diversity through literacy pedagogy, we hear shrill claims and counterclaims about political correctness, the canon of great literature, grammar, and back-to-basics."

This article asks if the above claims are appropriate for the new world we live in, with global connectedness and such classroom cultural diversity?  How do these challenges effect literacy pedagogy?  This challenge of cultural and linguistic diversity requires consideration on the part of educators.  Educators need to reconsider what students need to learn to be successful in the world.

The article argues that the working world is a shift from Henry Ford's conception of mass production

to postFordism, with flexible, multi-skilled workers

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DeVoss, Cushman & Grabill “Infrastructure and Composing”

"If students are to be effective and critical new-media composers, they should be equipped with ways in which they can consider and push at practices and standards in strategic ways" (16).

"We know many people, including ourselves, who have been prevented from working in certain ways as teachers and writers because it was infrastructurally impossible in a given context. Not intellectually impossible. Not even strictly technologically impossible. Something deeper" (17).

There are racial, gender, and socioeconomic barriers to new media writing.  Infrastructure, here, includes hardware and location, but also policies and standards, budget and support...

Institutions need to consider their infrastructure framework and ways to limit barriers between students and digital composition.

I found this second reading more interesting because I hadn't thought of some of the barriers that are built-into infrastructure.  For example, when I was a freshman in college in 1998, I had my own laptop (lucky me).  It was broken for a while and I had to type my paper in the computer lab-ick!  I felt hugely inconvenienced because I had grown so found of working on my paper on my schedule from the comfort of my own dorm room.  By using the computer lab, I had to go when it was open (which wouldn't work for all schedules), I had to pay by the page for printing, which was more expensive and meant that I had to have cash to put money on my student account (financial barrier), and I had to hike to the other side of campus to get to the nearest computer lab (issue of transportation if you live off campus).  These seem relatively minor, but the add up to a system that discriminates.  An assignment completed in my room could take an hour; that time is doubled if I have to do the assignment at the computer lab!