Then, after finishing my M.A. and moving on to a new university to pursue my Ph.D. and teach, I discovered that my students were a lot less receptive to the idea. I diligently provided my information to the students, but of the 60 students I taught this time, only about 5 sent me friend invitations. After the first few weeks, I assumed that the students were just not going to add me as a friend until it got closer to their essay’s due date. But, as the semester progressed and I added no more than students to my friends list, I began to wonder just why there was such a change. So at the end of the semester, I sat down with my students and asked them about this. I was in for a new discovery.

The students had wanted to use the Virtual Office Hours, but could not. Many of these students did not own their own computers. This, I realized, was the luxury of working at a private school where each student was packed off to college with a shiny new laptop. In the world of public education, few students get new laptops or even have computers at the school. I still did not understand this problem. I teach at a university that literally oozes technology. Students have access to about 6 computer labs and 2 cyber labs, a library that allows students laptops with wireless internet, multiple computer classrooms (including the one I taught in), and various computer kiosks around campus. So, I could not see why not having a computer in the dorm room was a problem. Since I required students to turn in their assignments via email, I knew that they were finding computer access somewhere. But then the students opened my eyes.

“We can’t download software onto the computers.”

That posed a bit of a problem. So, I walked away at the end of this Fall semester curious about how I could go about re-implementing Virtual Office Hours for the entire class. The following Spring semester, I tried Blackboard’s Virtual Office. But I had little success. It was not that the students were not using the Virtual Office, but Blackboard automatically logs you out after a pre-determined amount of time. Unfortunately, it also does not tell you that it has logged you out.

Then, I found Meebo. With Meebo, I found a solution that my students could use without having to download any software. They could use the site from any computer on campus and never had to do more than log into the site. My students love it. So, I want to pass this information on to you about not only how to use Meebo for Virtual Hours, but also how to set up Virtual Hours so that you and your students get the most out of these hours.

Two Different Ways to Use Meebo

From the Website

To use Meebo from the website, all you have to do is log in with an instant messenger account. It’s that simple. If you prefer, you can set up a separate account through Meebo so that you can manage multiple accounts through a single login. If you provide your students with various Instant Messenger preferences, this is the way to go. Once you create an account, you can log in and add your other accounts to this one. It works like an online version of Trillion or Adm.

From Your Course Homepage or Blog

The other way to use Meebo is to sign up for a meebo account and then get the widget to put a Meebo box on your class website or blog. You’ll notice off to the right of this entry is a Meebo box. This is a simple widget that you get from the Meebo website. You can put it on any site that allows you to add HTML to the site. To be seen as online on your website, you still need to log in to Meebo. If you’re running Firefox they have a plug in that allows you to log in while bypassing the actual site.

A Few Guidelines for Initiating Virtual Hours

Since creating a means for students to access you during your Virtual Hours, let me also share with you a few things that I have learned about setting up Virtual Hours over the past few years.

Do

• Be Flexible. Remember that your students have lives. If you consistently set up virtual hours weeknights between 4 and 9 p.m. then you are putting students who have a part time job in a bind. On the other hand, if you only set up weekends, you’re putting those students who work weekends or spend their weekends with their family in a bind. So be flexible; choose a night or two during the week and a few hours over the weekend that you can feasibly stay close enough to your computer to answer an occasional student question.

• Be Consistent. Set up a plan for Virtual Hours at the beginning of the semester. If you want to be available to your students every week, then make that commitment. Make sure, though, that you are available at the hours you said you would be. If, however, you decide that you only want to maintain Virtual Hours when students are finishing up a major assignment, make sure that you let these students know a week or two in advance (and I recommend email as well as verbal notice) that you are having Virtual Hours. Remind them of days and times.

• Set Guidelines. Make your students aware of things that you simply will not accept during Virtual Hours. These are best presented on the handout that you provide to students with your contact information. This way, everything is there together. Here are a few of my rules.
  • Do not IM me to ask what was done in class when you were not there.
  • Do not use text message language in the Virtual Office setting. Please, use plain English.

• Keep a Log of Pet Peeves. Trust me, after a few weeks of Virtual Hours you will have discovered several things that bother you. You will want to add these to the list for your next group of students (or at the least address them with that group).

Do Not

• Do Not Be Unrealistic. It’s easy to think that if you’re at your computer all day Saturday, you can just set up an all-day marathon of Saturday hours. Inevitably, something will come up on Saturday that must be done before the end of the day. Make sure that you give yourself time to prepare for these problems.

• Do Not Be Shy with Rule Breakers. If a student breaks the rules that you have set up with the Virtual Hours, do not hesitate to end the conversation and (if need be) block the user. Remember, the Virtual Office is an extension of your own office. Don’t put up with anything there that you would not put up with in the classroom or in the office.

• Do Not Give Up Mid-Semester. If the Virtual Hours are not working for you, wait until the end of the semester to stop using them. It’s just bad form to quit in the middle of the semester.

If I can clarify anything in this post (or if you wish for me to post a step-by-step guide to using Meebo on your homepage, please let me know.

Happy Techno-Teaching!

Because technology has increased the intensity and complexity of literate environments, the twenty-first century demands that a literate person possess a wide range of abilities and competencies, many literacies. These literacies—from reading online newspapers to participating in virtual classrooms—are multiple, dynamic, and malleable. As in the past, they are inextricably linked with particular histories, life possibilities and social trajectories of individuals and groups. Twenty-first century readers and writers need to

• Develop proficiency with the tools of technology
• Build relationships with others to pose and solve problems collaboratively and cross-culturally
• Design and share information for global communities to meet a variety of purposes
• Manage, analyze and synthesize multiple streams of simultaneous information
• Create, critique, analyze, and evaluate multi-media texts
• Attend to the ethical responsibilities required by these complex environments

(NCTE “Toward A Definition of 21st-Century Literacies)

I applaud NCTE for the bold step to include technology in the definition of literacy. This is a step that we need in order to further the literacy of our next generation. Generation X found themselves pioneers of the Internet, and I already see my students (Gen-Net maybe) as pioneers on the Internet. I learned about Facebook, Myspace, Twitter and I think even YouTube through my students. I think it is wonderful that they are aware of these popular sites. But I think that before we can see such a shift in the definition of literacy, we need to first see a shift in the education of the teachers expected to accomplish this task.

I’ve been thinking this for quite a while, but I have not ventured to put it into writing because I was not sure how to go about discussing this change. So what finally fueled the fire? Will Richardson’s recent post on Weblogged. In this post, he raises this question:

[H]ow in god’s name can we talk seriously about 21st Century skills for kids if we’re not talking 21st Century skills for educators first? (URGENT: 21st Century Skills for Educators (and Others) First )

So Will got me thinking about it. The comments on this post (there are over 100 at this writing and the dialogue is ongoing) got me contemplating the topic. The comments represent many divergent voices–those who want to see reform in education policy, those who are using technologies on their own, and those who are using technology in their classrooms as well as their personal lives. But what really got me thinking was after reading this post and the comments, I had a colleague mention to me that she was really excited about an upcoming presentation I’m doing on using blogs in First Year Composition. This was a presentation I did for the first time last year and one that I was asked to do again. Since I’ve now been blogging for over a year, blogs are kind of an “old” technology for me. But what she said resonated within my mind.

Teachers are hungry to use technology in their classrooms. But they don’t. While part of this lack of usage stems from problems with education reform that emerges from administrators and education boards not fully understanding the technologies themselves, another part of teachers not using technology in the classroom comes from the simple fact that they don’t know how to use the technologies, let alone how to incorporate these technologies into their classrooms. In some cases, the teachers don’t know about the technologies at all. I’m not kidding. You should have seen the look on my face when one of my students asked if I “tweeted.” I was dumbfounded and had no idea what she was talking about and I consider myself in the know about technologies. If we are going to be the teachers who use the technologies in our classroom, we have to become proactive in learning these technologies.

But this post is not intended to be a soapbox. If you’re reading this post, you are obviously aware of the presence of blogs in our everyday life. Take a minute and ask yourself what technologies you are well versed in. Have you posted to YouTube? Do you use PowerPoint to aid in your lectures? What other technologies do you use? Do you have a Twitter account? Make a list. When you have your list made, consider your colleagues. Do they know these technologies? Do they know how they can use them in the classroom? Is there a technology that you know one of your colleagues knows that you would like to be familiar with? Now, instead of waiting for somebody to put together a workshop on one of these technologies, consider creating your own workshop. Think about it. You’re a teacher. You know these technologies. Is there really a difference in teaching what you know about Google Earth to your colleagues and teaching it to your students? Within your own school you can create a technology club (much like a book club, except that instead of reading a book a month, you experiment with a technology each month). Get together as a group and discuss the technologies and how you could use these to aid your teachers. This is exactly what I’m doing with the colleagues I know are interested in using the technology but don’t know how. Sure, you may have to wait for education reform to allow you to use these technologies, but if you start using them, you can readily become one of the advocates who aids in getting the reforms to education that we need to teach these technologies to our students.

To give you a head start, I’ll be uploading materials from each of my workshops to this blog. I know that I can easily upload the notes and handouts here. I have permission from my group to upload a Podcast of our discussions, so I’ll provide more information on the location of these items when we begin. Be patient. Our goal is to do a workshop a month. However, remember that we are all doctoral students, so there may be couple of dry months throughout the year.

As always, feel free to comment to the blog if there is anything that you want to see covered. If it’s not a technology I’m familiar with, I’ll explore it and post as soon as I’m comfortable with teaching this information.

Happy Techno-Teaching

Katt

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This article is also featured on TheApple; join the conversation with other teachers in TheApple’s article discussion

Margaret Hagood’s “New Media and Online Literacies” asserts that in order to understand the full benefit of literacy acquisition through new medias researchers must use a close examination of the texts they study in order to comprehend the use of new medias by various ages. Investigating the questions of who is affected by new media literacies, how these new medias affect both the researched and the researcher in conjunction with the methods of conceptualizing medias and crossing fields of medias for research, Hagood demonstrates that a focused age group in new media research will not demonstrate the true benefit of media literacies in today’s society. With her focus on methods of research, Hagood addresses fellow researchers delving into the world of new medias in their studies. Her purpose with this article is to demonstrate that a narrow focus on age groups interacting with new medias will not do justice to the extent to which these medias aid in increasing literacy broader than the traditional reading and writing literacy.

Particularly useful to my study is the idea of active audiencing she describes in her study. This concept posits that the audience member is not a passive receiver of messages and advertising, but an active participant in the conversation taking place in and around these messages (388).

In “Measuring the Acquisition of Media-Literacy Skills” (2003), Hobbs and Frost explore the acquisition of media-literacy skills in a yearlong high school English course and demonstrate how this class improved the literacy of the students. Examining one specific media enhanced English course, Hobbs and Frost look at media-literacy acquisition in the areas of message analysis and purpose combined with reading and writing skills to determine the success of students from various social classes working in the same classroom. Hobbs and Frost present this information to teachers of all grades and disciplines as information presented by research professors distanced from the study in order to show an unbiased evaluation of media usage in the classroom. Hobbs and Frost’s article encourages readers to incorporate media material into their classrooms to aid students in meeting academic goals.

Hobbs and Frost demonstrate an effective study in their work. As distanced observers from the students participating in the study, they allow the reader to put more merit to their study. Overall, the study is effective and supports the argument that media literacies should be used more in the classroom However, this article does not aid in my research for the specific reason that I am not focusing on the classroom itself, but on media acquisition outside of the classroom. Since the methodology of the study involves using live participants, which is not a portion of my research, the article is not useful to my study.

In “Online Literacies and Learning,” Robin Goodfellow argues that online environments provide immense ways of improving the social literacies of todays students and examines a manner of research which explores the variation in relationships between teacher and student both online and face to face. Using the three dimensional theory of Lankshear,Snyder and Green Goodfellow examines the potential of this method of social learning research in relation to potential pedagogy and uses this method to examines two situations where social learning has been practiced. Goodfellow demonstrates the advantages of social learning as it relates to her fellow teachers and puts forth methods of research that benefit this audience in comprehending the benefits of social learning. Goodfellow’s purpose in writing this article is to motivate peers to begin exploring social learning online and to incorporate the usage of this medium of education into their pedagogy.

Goodfellow’s study exemplifies the benefits of social learning in a strictly academic setting, and much of what she examines in her article pertains to non-academic settings as well. Her examination of the three dimensional study and links to other methodologies aids the researcher in understanding how these methods may be combined and used to examine any social network regardless of its discipline. For the work I am doing with wedding planning message boards, the theories that Goodfellow examines can easily be seen as a base method for engaging in research in this area.

As I experimented successfully with blogging in the classroom, I began contemplating it as a dissertation topic. When I found out I was teaching developmental writing this fall, I was enthused. I was waiting patiently for a chance to experiment with blogging at such an important level.

But then the other shoe dropped. We’ve been going through some “changes” in our department this semester. We have an enthusiastic and open-minded new director that can infuse some life into our FYC classes. We have a new common syllabus that we’re allowed some flexibility with. We have random new rules. And, apparently, we have security rules too. When all this newness began, I was polite enough to ask about using blogs in the class. Now, I did this because they have gone as far as telling us to refuse to answer emails sent from students using an email address not assigned to them through the school. It had to do with “privacy” and “security.” It doesn’t make sense to me. I usually use my Gmail account because no other server that I am familiar with allows me to 1)be alerted the minute I have email, 2)keep conversations together instead of having to sift through individual emails with the same topic and 3)allowed me to make my life as simple as 54 categories in one mailbox. But, I changed.

And, in addition to changing, I was polite enough to ask if I could use blogs. Yes, I know the saying “it’s easier to ask forgiveness than permission,” but I was being nice and trying, in the long run, to save my job.

So, a week later, I get an email back telling me that the word has come down the foodchain that no blogs can be used that are not hosted on the school server. Well, in essence, the school just said that I could not blog. Why? We have one way to access a blog–through Blackboard. Not that this would be a problem, but this aspect of Blackboard is currently only available to distance learning instructors. So, I’m left with no blog.

Okay, I can work with this. I have plans once we get through this semester. But what’s really bugging me–in much the same way that I was bothered with the fact that my students could watch YouTube videos in class but nowhere else on campus–is that the reason I have been forbidden to allow my students to use a blog in the classroom is apparently for their security.

Now, understand that when I emailed about this originally, I was clear to explain the safety to the blogsite I wanted to use–this one. I also explained how blogs could be set as private and all that jazz. But no, this site is not secure enough for the school. Okay, I can see them denying it. But there should be larger concerns if they’re going to play the security card. Facebook and Myspace are still available to students from their dorm rooms, computer labs, library and even from the computers they use in the classroom.

It’s starting to sound, to me, as though this is not a privacy issue, but rather a freedom issue. We were told when they required us to use only our school email (which we can’t even forward to another account that will allow us to answer back using the school email) that this was because they could keep the emails on the main server even if we deleted them. That way, if we needed them later, we could have access to them. I’m assuming that means that they can also read any of them at any time. And, by forcing students to use only school sponsored sites, they have the ability to censor anything we say. (In fact, you should check out the changes to my “About Me” page.)

All in all, it sounds like a nice big panopticon where the administration has the ability to quash our freedom of speech, invade our privacy and censor as they wish. If you will excuse me, there’s a link I need to delete from my page before I call it a night.

After reading your paper I’ve decided to make more use of blogs in my face to face advanced writing class in the fall. One problem with such set-ups, though, is that the class contributions and documents are all public. How do you contend with that?

Now, I wasn’t just gloating over the fact that I’ve influenced a professor (and me, a lowly PhD student). I was also gloating over the fact that I had an answer and had already been contemplating addressing this issue in a paper/presentation that I want to get a jump start on. Damn, I’m good! Look for more on this current question as time progresses.