Knobel & Lankshear Chapter 1

1. What was the chapter about? 
This chapter lays out what the book is all about. It also hits on the major theorists, like Gee and Street, and also on the major parts of new literacies, namely sociocultural theory, D/discourses, and the presence of different technological interactions.

Probably what I appreciate most is how they talk about what "new" means. The practices are not new: even before fan fiction for example, there were people who engaged in the activity. They just could not share or get feedback as easily. What is "new" is how we can talk about literacy as something that not everyone does exactly the same way for exactly the same purpose. This might not be a new idea in and of itself (Street called this an ideological model of reading in 1984!), but the ways some people talk about stages of development and learning standards you would think literacy was a unitary process.

I am glad we have new literacies studies to highlight this important fact. 

2. What does this chapter tell you about teaching students?
Building from my first point, the main part I get is that we need to find ways that students want to interact with reading and make learning worth their and our whiles. I know that the references in this book are dated (and it is so OLD - it's from that faraway time 2008!?!) but I still see the points applying today.

We live in a world where people can get fired up about books like Twilight and interact with the media to the point where big factions of Team Jacob and Team Edward arise. They mobilize around social networks, buy t-shirts, watch movies, debate, and bring these texts into their lives. 

Additionally, some people write fan fictions about the characters they like. They post their stories online, get feedback, build connections with other fans, and in one case make something derivative that they can shift, twist, and shape into something new that draws its own fans, creates its own sensations, and becomes a phenomenon of its own. 

Is all of this work crap? Is it garbage? Is it worth our while? That's not for me to say. What I do see is that people get mobilized and excited about a book and about literacy practices in ways I wish I could get our students interested in school. And they make things!

Our job is to find out what we can do to get the kind of connections and relevance to work in our favor. That is a tall task, I understand, and it will take us some big changes to get our instruction to meet students in terms of interest, relevance, and usefulness. It is not just about technology but what we can do.

3. Can this chapter be applied in your content area?
I can't think of a content area this chapter doesn't apply to.