A Luddite Speaks

I. Creative Use of Technology

"It's as if our instincts lead us to take what we've done in the past and reproduce the process using different tools to create the same product" (Kajder, 2008, p. 210).

Guilty as charged! I've used computers in my classroom, but mostly as glorified typewriters and occasionally for research. It's how I use computers, and so it makes sense that I'd bring into my classroom those applications (all two of them) with which I'm most comfortable. What Kadjer's article doesn't acknowledge is that not every teacher is as tech-savvy as she is, that some of us became English majors because we fell in love with the very low-tech idea that we could create entire worlds by making black marks on a blank sheet of paper. I very much want to engage my students in the study and appreciation of language and literature—and firmly believe that that could best be accomplished through the use of technology—but I don't feel confident in my ability to lead them in those endeavors. I broke out into a cold sweat when I read Kadjer's articles. It all seems so daunting, but I suppose I'll have to take it one application at a time.

Kadjer, S.B. (2007). Unleashing potential with emerging technologies. In K. Beers, R.E. Probst, and L. Rief (eds.), Adolescent literacy: turning promise into practice (213-229). Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

II. The Sounds of Stories

"Letting students read aloud from their favorite books, emphasizing dramatic techniques and interpretation, is a practical way to develop fluency, listening skills, and oral interpretation (Weiss, 2008, p. 79)."

My mom loves books on tape—it's how she "reads" books these days—but I'm proof that the auditory learner gene doesn't get passed down through the mother. I cannot, for the life of me, make it through an audiobook. (I've tried now three times with Stargirl.) My frustration with audiobooks, instead of making me right them off as a pedagogical tool, has made me more appreciative of how varied the learning styles, preferences, and intelligences of my students are. Despite my antipathy for audiobooks, I had fully intended to use audiobooks in my classroom but had viewed them mostly as options for lower-level readers. Reading Weiss's article, it occurred to me that audiobook performances might be a good way to model for all my students what fluent, lively reading sounds like. Instead of having the audiobook be an end in itself, listening to the performance could be used to prepare students for doing their own recording of books (as was suggested by Professor King) or to turn books into "scripts" that could then be "performed" rather than read. I know that my students are always filled with dread at the prospect of hearing a poor reader read a selection from a shared text. Emphasizing the performative aspects of reading may make reading more appealing to a lot of my students—and may increase their fluency in the process.

Weiss, M. J. (2008). The sounds of stories. The ALAN Review, 35(3), 79-81.