Reflecting on Davidson and Goldberg's 'The Future of Thinking'

I am usually conflicted when discussing issues related to digital technology in the classroom. As a student, I have benefitted from the use of digital technology in the classroom; at the same time, I have experienced powerful educators who were highly effective at traditional lecture void of digital technology.

Reflecting on Davidson and Goldberg’s The Future of Thinking: Learning Institution in a Digital Age causes me to think about some of the issues related to the use of technology in the classroom. For Davidson and Goldberg, the educational institution is a “mobilizing network.” Here, the digital age has opened the potential for the educational moment to happen at any moment under multiple contexts outside of the traditional classroom or within the context of the traditional lecture.

Further, Davidson and Goldberg suggest that the use of digitized technology "de-familiarize[s] ways of knowing. They write, “It [de-familiarization] means rethinking not only what knowledge we possess but how we possess it, from what sources, and what that body of knowledge actually means, what it is worth. It means moving beyond our comfortable world of peers and all the tokens of esteem, value, respect, and reward that that world holds” (36).

While the digital age has provided the possibility for the revolution of education, Davidson and Goldberg show how disparities in digital access persist in many parts of the U.S., which function as barriers to the potential of mobilizing the educational space. Along with these disparities, the attitudes against digital technology also prevent this mobilization from happening.

While the authors discuss the possibilities of mobilizing education in a digital world, I am a bit apprehensive about the reliance of completely digitizing the education process.

For instance, Davidson and Goldberg write,

“Sometimes this mode of relational reading might draw us completely away from the original text, hypertextually streaming us into completely new threads and pathways across the information highways and byways” (54).

How does digitized, relation-reading affect reading comprehension and the close reading process? Is it possible to reinforce close reading strategies when one is reading the hypertext? I would like to see how the authors address these questions. Even more, I am interested in how “self learning” in a digitized world is influenced by the subject matter. For instance, students that I have surveyed on this issue usually find many benefits to digital technology in the classroom, but also express the importance of face-to-face interaction and actual engagement with the physical text in the literature classroom.

As an instructor, I have used YouTube and Facebook to “remix” the text. At the same time, I have used traditional approaches to teach this information too. While integrating technology in the classroom has proven to be beneficial, I have difficulty relying on technology for delivering the entire semester on the computer, especially in a literature course, without any physical contact with my students. This challenge leads me to question, is it the goal to use digital technology to replace traditional approaches to teaching or is it the goal to integrate digital technology with traditional methods of teaching?

To Lecture or Discuss?: A Response to James Lang's 'On Course' and Tim Blackmore's "Play Your Cards Right"

Is the traditional lecture the best method to filling our students’ minds with valuable knowledge? Or, is it our role to provide the tools for students to discern knowledge? Is there a way to integrate both methods?

Chapters three through five in James Lang’s On Course discusses a peaceful cohesion between the lecture and class discussion methods. I found his analysis practical, at the same time, engaging. Lang seems to allow for both lecture and discussion approaches in the classroom placing a greater emphasis on the context of the particular class.

He begins his discussion on lectures by referring to research to suggest that students’ retention of the information in given lecture drops 10% every ten minutes of class. While I do not disagree with the studies he references, I am interested in knowing what students are paying attention to and how they associate what they are learning in the class. For instance, I conducted a small informal study based on Thomas A. Angelo’s description of “punctuated lectures.” Here, I paused every 20 minutes to allow students to respond to the lecture. During each pause, students were asked to honestly describe their attentiveness at that moment. I found that students were paying more attention when I discussed information that they thought was relevant to either the major paper or the upcoming test. After this assessment, I now constantly remind students of the relevancy of the information being covered.

In no way am I suggesting my measly anecdotal study be measured against mounds of professional research about how much information students actually retain from lectures. At the same time, I think it would be interesting to see how these retention rates are influenced by students' awareness of the relevancy to either high stakes or low stakes grades, or even making them aware that the information being covered does not have a direct relationship to the paper or the test. Perhaps there is already research out there on this?

Along with Lang’s observations I am also interested in Tim Blackmore’s essay, “Play Your Cards Right: A Narrative of First –Year Students’ Reader-Responses.” Blackmore describes his use of the notecard strategy to gauge student responses and help them develop discernment for the literature along with awareness of the interpretive community to which they belong.

Here, Blackmore describes how his notecard strategy finds theoretical basis in Stanley Fish’s work in reader-response criticism. In this case, Fish places emphasis on the reader in the interpretative process allowing for moments of indeterminacy between the re-reading and reinterpretation of the text. Rather than operating from a stable concrete meaning, the text is always in flux privileging meaning to what Fish describes as the text’s "interpretative community."

Blackmore describes how the use of the notecards allows students to respond personally to the text; at the same, this strategy allows students to respond openly and honestly to what they are reading. By the end of the semester, his students are more apt to develop critiques with a greater sense of complexity and awareness of how to “perform” their critical academic voice. He writes, “when students come to realize that the more they preform, the less afraid they are, the more they are competent, the more they feel able to consider their surroundings, and then they begin to preform with gusto (60).” 

Out of the examples he provides, the ones that had the greatest impact on me was the example of the student’s response to Roethke’s “Once More, the Round,” the student’s response to what Blackmore describes as, “course material about identity in a Fordist world,” and finally, the student's interrogation of the purpose of movies. These examples illustrate students using the text to not only problematize what they were reading, but also problematize the world in which they live.

As a writing/reading teacher, I have to constantly remind myself that my students do not all enter the classroom with a stake in interpreting literature and that it is my job to develop their stake in this process. While many of the methods discussed in the aforementioned titles have proven to be beneficial, I find the larger challenge is not sticking to one method but rather, knowing how to use varied methods depending on the dynamics of a particular class.

What do you think about this? An effective way to lecture? Or complete chaos?