I recently completed listening to the audiobook version of a biography of Isaac Newton by James Gleick. I was both impressed and disappointed over Newton's life and his tactics. On the one hand, he exemplified the life of an autodidact, someone who taught himself and was continuously engaged in attentive learning. On the other, he often delayed publishing his work, or worked in secrecy, paying too much attention to issues of prestige and academic politics.
But I'm glad I read / listened to the book, and this has spurred me on to read other books both about the Enlightenment and books by James Gleick. Recommended by a friend, Gleick's The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood is now on my to-read list. I have lots of books on that list, and I face the same problem described by Ben Wagner, that my lists of things to read grow much more quickly than my capacity to read them. (This all started because of a post by Nyssa Silvester in response to an NPR piece about never being able to read everything that you want to.)
So, does an institution direct your reading of literature, or do you?
I'm trying to teach my students both good habits for consuming content (such as effectively using Google Reader), as well as to understand the importance of creating content regularly. I think something that will help here is to think in terms of consuming in order to create.
This is actually something that was done long ago in the Renaissance. It was the sort of habit that led to literary greats like Shakespeare and Milton. People in that period were eagerly consuming all of the newly rediscovered works of classical literature that were coming out through the new medium of the printing press. But the way that they learned to read was to do so precisely so that they could then use that reading to speak or to write. (In fact, they did a lot of imitation exercises that really made a close connection between the acts of reading and writing.)
As my students struggle to follow my direction to create content daily, they should really think of this as a habit to accompany their media and information consumption. There are great benefits to combining CONSUME and CREATE in this way. For one thing, it helps you to filter your information and media sources; it gives a purpose to consumption that makes it less random. It can also temper our media hunger, which can be insatiable. If I am in the habit of posting content regularly, I have to get out of the passive, lurker mode of taking things in, and change gears into the active, creative mode of posting and publishing.
Perhaps the most important content you can create today is you.
That's right. You've got to represent yourself -- that is, if you want to be taken seriously in the digital age. You can either not attend to this, and let people find what they will when they search for you online (and believe me, they will!); or, you can manage your online identity and build it into something that creates real opportunities.
So, start with managing your online profiles.
An online profile is a place where you can formally introduce who you are, what you do, your interests, social connections, and content streams. I suggest managing at least three such profiles, beginning with those that will be most visible and useful -- profiles on Google, Facebook, and LinkedIn, and your blog profile:
No, not that kind of engaged. I mean are you engaged in meaningful learning, sharing, and interacting? These are reasons to learn and use certain digital tools: they can increase our ability to do all of these. Of course, being an "engaged" student does not require anything electronic. The video I've embedded shows a prior student, Ashley, who has been out in the fields with women in India, engaged very meaningfully in their lives through a field study research project.
I am battling with how to figure out ways to get my students truly engaged -- and not just in special circumstances like studying abroad. I want them to buy in to what they are learning, take charge of their education, not be told what to do, and to take on meaningful projects that aren't dictated to them.
But there is opposition -- lots of it.
We are fighting against entrenched habits from an older paradigm of learning -- one that is based upon learning as a largely isolated affair (when it is now both possible and preferable to be learning collaboratively and interactively).
We are fighting the inertia of students not being expected to demonstrate their learning except through formal knowledge products (such as research papers) or formal evaluations (exams and grades).
We are also fighting the near universal acceptance of school being insulated. Apparently, schooling is legit only if it keeps students in controlled environments, far from active, authentic engagement beyond the classroom walls.
One of the principles of digital literacy is learning to consume information intelligently. That means finding worthwhile sources and effectively filtering; it means structuring and channeling sources so they can be readily accessed or found later.
Enter Google Reader.
Google Reader (available to anyone with a Gmail or Google account by just going to http://reader.google.com) is a feed aggregator.
It's a what?
Yes, a feed aggregator. That means it can collect designated information streams and bundle these together for efficient browsing, reading, and research. Too many people either rely on destination sites to pull sets of information together (like newspapers or major media outlets). Or, they have a set of favorite sites or blogs which they make the rounds to (when they remember to do so). Google Reader (as other aggregators) makes it possible to be highly selective in one's information sources, and to have this richer stream pushed to you automatically and across different devices and platforms. There are social benefits, too, that I will get to.
First, watch my helmet-camera view of taking some ski jumps up at Snowbird for 30 seconds:
Now my question to you: Have you noticed how constantly you are creating content?
Maybe you don't think of all those status updates, text messages, pictures or videos you've put online as "content." But that's what they are. Or when you comment on others' blog posts or "like" something on Facebook. All that is you, a content creator, constantly contributing your ideas, feedback, and media.
It's so casual, so informal, that it doesn't seem to be all that important. But it is! Just think about how much credit you give to what others say and do through the new media. And of course, you've heard all the horror stories about people who are careless in what they post online. (Did you hear about that UCLA student that got expelled for her racist video complaining about Asians?). Hopefully you are being careful about not posting things that would embarrass you. But are you giving enough thought to posting content that will be to your credit?
As an English professor who has been teaching students the analysis of literary works for a couple of decades, I am very interested in the process of reading. I value books of all kinds, but especially works of a more literary nature, and I have a real investment in using (and teaching) ways of reading that are substantial. We literary types are all about close, careful readings. We teach literary theories that help to plumb the depths of content, and we comb carefully through the formal qualities that give works clarity and aesthetic texture.
That's all for the good, but the way that literature is taught in the traditional classroom is breaking down in the digital age. What's served generations well is not serving the present generation. I'd like to shine the spotlight on these weaknesses by talking here about typical classroom practice for literary studies.
In classroom practice, we literature professors follow a very established pattern: we assign lengthy readings that require intense discipline on the part of our students (merely to complete the reading assignments); then, we assign formal essays that require the application of literary theories and methods of formal analysis. As our students create arguments about the literary works they study, they acquire a valued kind of literacy that we hope is a transferable skill beyond merely saying something about Shakespeare.
I'd like to analyze this from the point of view of CONSUME, CREATE, and CONNECT, the three principles I believe we need to understand for digital literacy today.
