Reading Response 3--Informality Anyone?

So, because my media post was forever long, because I am teaching in class on Thursday, and because even I am tired of listening to me go on and on, I have made a commitment to myself that this week’s post will be of the less verbose variety. Because of this commitment, I am going to respond to one of the readings and leave the rest for my lesson.

I think that things may be finally coming together in my mind. Like my father’s explanation of how to use Word 2007, Amy’s overt instruction/explanation of the connection between Gee’s “structure” and Kress’s “purpose” helped things to click for me. The New London Group’s “Pedagogy of Multiliteracies” provided the final connection that has helped me to make sense of it all, for which I am grateful. (Now here’s hoping that MY version of “sense” is the same as others’.) As I’ve been “putting it all together” this week, I had a few more random thoughts regarding this specific reading, and I want to focus on one of these here.

This particular, and quite random thought deals with the discussion of changing working lives. We have talked about the need for us, as educators, to cultivate “profile people” and the fact that our students are multimodal learners. In the New London Group’s article, they talk about the fact that a new work life (which is what is happening with the focus on profile people, multimodalities, etc.) is the result of new social relationships at work. Technology has helped to alter the workplace and the attitudes of workers, who now work in teams. They say that “effective teamwork depends…on informal, oral, and interpersonal discourse. This informality also translates into hybrid and interpersonally sensitive informal written forms, such as electronic mail” (12).

As I read this, I noticed the use of variations on the word “informal,” and I began thinking of my own work life. Has my realm of work, the classroom, become a more informal place due to revolutionary changes in technology? As I thought about it, I came to the conclusion that, yes, there is a level of informality that exists in the public high school that I am pretty sure did not exist when I attended high school. (Allow me to qualify at this point: this is from my own personal experience and observation—nothing else.) The introduction of email, text messaging, and social networks have, again—in my opinion, broken down many of the “boundaries” that were once a part of the teacher/student relationship. Students who would, even still, NEVER dream of looking the teacher’s home phone number up and then picking up the phone to call and ask a question, have absolutely no problem trying to get cell phone numbers and then texting questions (or even less formal things) to teachers. Email has made it possible to get information to a teacher at any time of the day or night; making appointments for face to face interaction is rendered unnecessary in the minds of many because of this technology. And then there’s Facebook and MySpace. People have been fired because of the “informal nature” of the content of their social networking pages when students have been involved. After thinking about it, I think that technology is one of the main elements at the core of changing relationships between teachers and students. I’d never really thought of it that way before—maybe it’s just me though?

Overall, after reading for this week, I think that the face of education in changing in all kinds of ways that I have never thought of before. It’s interesting to look at it with a different set of lenses.