Poetry Slam and An Unexpected Axis Experience

This year, our seventh grade English students will be participating in an online poetry project from the Literacy Workshop. Steve Bergen, the CIO and Computer Teacher at The Children's Storefront in Harlem, New York, posted to the ISED list serv about this project. He has already had his class "meet" other poets online and they've shared their work with one another. So, our English teachers Charlotte Stice and Andy Puente have agreed to take part. We've just received notices about how to set up our class blogs and are looking forward to reading poetry by other students. We'll also have a class conversation or two with Steve's classes.

When I first began chatting with Steve, he was quite insistent that we chat via phone before any Skyping or Im'ing. I admit, at first, I was perplexed. I've chatted with quite a few people online before actually speaking to them realtime and I wasn't quite sure why he wanted to approach our conversation in this manner. It seemed kind of old-fashioned, frankly. During that talk, however, he explained that the connections you make when you share an actual conversation are different than those you have with someone you have no real-world connection with. Well, duh, why didn't I make that connection myself? I've spent hours reading and learning about how online communications are distinctly different from those that occur both online and offline. So, thanks to Steve, I put two and two together. I, in fact, melded that educational axis for which this blog is named. Thanks for that, Steve.

Contemplating a Name Change

This whole line of questioning that shapes my blogposts, that question of whether kids have a divide between their home use of technology and their school use, might actually suggest that I am a digital immigrant. The fact that I even perceive a divide there might suggest that I see technology as something that can be separated into social/educational use. I say all this because I've read another article (yes, another one), this time from the Annals of the Association of American Geographers from back in 2002. Gil Valentine and Sarah L. Holloway did a bunch of research in the English countryside and summarized it in their article, "Cyberkids? Exploring Children’s Identities and Social Networks in On-line and Off-line Worlds."

Here's an excerpt:
"Our empirical data shows that children’s off-line worlds are incorporated into their on-line worlds in four ways. First, some children’s on-line identities are direct (re)presentations of their off-line identities and activities. Second, even when children construct alternative identities on-line, these are often situated or contingent upon their off-line identities and peer group cultures, in that they are constructed to enhance their off-line identities or to compensate for perceived off-line inadequacies. Third, children’s on-line worlds reproduce off-line class and gender relations. Finally, the limitations of the technology children use and the economic and temporal realities of their everyday lives affect the nature and extent of their on-line activities" (313).

Hmm....maybe there IS NO Ed-Tech Axis. My goodness. What's a girl to do now?