Blogging Pedagogy - digital divide

A Canvas Tutorial, or, How Not To Enforce the Digital Divide

Scott Garbacz — Tue, 16 Jun 2015 02:28:11 +0000

Author:

Scott Garbacz

Image Credit:

In my E314 course, I need to teach a wide array of skills, ranging from academic research to close reading, from composition to the Oxford English Dictionary. Balancing these priorities against each other, and all of the skills against the need to provide students with a basic background for some demanding books, makes for an interesting challenge. Yet after a few semesters of teaching similar courses, which provided me with plenty of opportunities for fine-tuning my organization, I was surprised to hear one student make a rather basic observation to another:

“You’ve got to click, like, a lot if you want to see the comments on your paper.”

It was a bit of a revelatory moment for me. As someone who’s been using various forms of commenting software for the last decade or so, I never thought that the Canvas course management system posed any difficulties for students. I’d even prized myself on making a rather extensive and well-organized private course site, with various assignments, explanations of grading rubrics, links to important resources, and helpful hints tied together and always just a click or two away. But when I looked at what students actually had to do to see my comments, forcing myself to forget the basic assumptions I’ve internalized over the years, I realized—yeah. Maybe Canvas could be more easy to operate.

Or, more to the point, maybe I should be more proactive in providing my students with the tutorials and information they need to succeed in my class, rather than making it an impromptu computer-science flunk out class.

Below, I’m posting a series of images (along with comments, in a purposefully informal style that matches my classroom ethos) that walk through the process of accessing marginal comments in Canvas from a student’s perspective. I’d love these images to be shared; the more students are familiar with how to view their annotations, the better, and I’d like to think my effort provides benefit for more than just my students. In short, please adopt and adapt this tutorial at will.

But I also hope that the tutorial replicated below can give us a chance to think about the role of technology—and digital literacy—within classes that don’t have any particular digital focus. It’s tempting to blame students for failing to meet our arbitrary standards for technical proficiency. Yet leaving students without crucial instructions (even for tasks I find to be second-nature, and that seem to draw on a rather basic level of digital know-how) seems a betrayal of my role as an educator. Indeed, considering our growing awareness of the ways that the “digital divide” involves not just sheer access to web-based resources, but also an array of soft skills that may be disproportionally distributed among our students, it is crucial that we maintain awareness of our technology’s ability to throw unnecessary hurdles in the way of otherwise promising students. If we don’t consider the usability of our classroom technologies, we really are just policing the already problematic digital divide.

Looking at the Comments on Your Paper

I am a fan of Canvas. Unfortunately, sometimes their userface can be a bit ... disorientating. Here, therefore, is your Official Guide to Seeing the Comments I Gave To Your Paper(TM)!

Step 1: when your paper is graded, the course homepage should look something like this. Click on the link in the green circle (I expect you already knew this.)

Step 2: Click on the "View Feedback" tab circled in GREEN. Not the friendly-looking link to your paper that seems so inviting and linkish. (Yeah, Canvas's UI could probably be better here.) Note that it is circled in red. Do not click it. It will not help you.

You will also see overall comments on the right of your screen.

Step 3: Here things get a bit tricky. Some parts of your paper will be highlighted. There will be dotted lines going off into the right margin (circled in yellow). You also might see some comments at the end of your paper, and you will still see the general feedback on the right (both circled in blue). However, here you need to click on the minus sign (circled in green) a couple of times to get my many specific comments on your paper!

Step 4: Now you can see all of my comments (especially the ones circled in blue)! Congratulations! This will really help you in revisions.

25 Things Students Forget About the Internet, or Why Explicit Instruction of Internet Literacy is Vital (Plus a Special Bonus Thing!!)

Wall — Tue, 14 Aug 2012 02:41:58 +0000

Author:

Amanda Wall

Image Credit:

Steve Rhode

This list is by no means complete. If I had the time, it would probably be 50 items long instead of 25. It came about as I was mulling over how to explain to students that no, the audience for any given text on the internet is (probably) not all internet users. And I realized that there are lot of these simple ideas floating around that many people don't know or ignore or forget, partly because some of them are commonsensical and don't seem to be worth mentioning and partly because they are made invisible by a lot of the popular ways of using and thinking about the internet. My title for this list was originally "25 Things Students Don't Know About the Internet," but as I began brainstorming, I realized that teachers (myself included) also tend to forget these simple ideas and thus forget to mention them to our students. And students will often readily assent to these ideas; they simply don't realize they're acting on these hidden assumptions.

Tekla Hawkins kindly suggested a couple of these ideas. The last four are, I admit, more controversial than the others, but definitely ideas that I'm willing to argue. I'm grateful for suggestions for additions to the list, or alternately, counterarguments about the current items.

25 Things We Forget About the Internet (+ One Bonus Thing)

Not everyone in the world or even the U.S. has access to the internet.
Not everyone who does have access also has consistent access to the internet.
All information on the internet is NOT available at all times to all internet users.
Even if information is in a publicly accessible space on the internet, not everyone will see it.
A lot of information is only "publicly accessible" if you have the right computer, the right browser, and the right physical abilities.
All this means that, even if information is posted in a publicly accessible space on the internet, the actual audience is definitely not everyone on the internet.
The author's intended audience is probably also not everyone on the internet. If they say that it is, they're (probably) not thinking very rhetorically.
Sometimes people don't like it when you take the information they posted publicly for one audience and put it elsewhere for a different audience --yes, even when it was already "public." For every example ever, see Facebook.
Just because you can find information on the internet doesn't mean it's true.
Just because you can't find information in the first two or three searches doesn't mean it's not on the internet.
Just because you can't find information on the internet in the first twenty or thirty searches doesn't mean it's not on the internet.
Accordingly, the ability to search for and find particular, credible sources of information is a skill that must be learned.
Just because information isn't available on the internet doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
Just because information isn't available on the internet doesn't mean you don't need it.
Not everyone on the internet is an asshole.
Not everyone on the internet will be nice to you or give you the benefit of the doubt.
Your ability to be anonymous in any internet space is always limited and contingent.
Your ability to be transparent in any internet space is always limited and contingent.
Your ability to choose your audience in any internet space is always limited and contingent.
Not every piece of text and media on the internet is free for the taking or unlimited use.
But some things are, for some uses. These uses depends on a host of things, including but not limited to federal law, accepted practice, and good manners.
Web utopians think the internet or its associated technologies have a revolutionary potential that will save our minds, our businesses, our politics, and in some cases, our souls. It won't.
Web dystopians think the internet or its associate technologies are destroying our attention spans, our ability to communicate with each other, and the quality of our cultural output. It's not.
The internet, like every other technology, works with and through and on society. One does not independently cause effects on the other.
For all of these reasons, to use the internet thoughtfully and rhetorically must be considered a literacy, and one which must be explicitly taught to all of us who bounce so recklessly and hopefully around this new frontier.

Bonus: Like most other composition technologies, the internet is a source of both joy and terror about our responsibilities to ourselves and to each other. Internet forever.