Make It Mean Something

Although the focus for this week's readings and the focus of this week's class is to be podcasting, I got more out of them than a simple how-to. Podcasting wasn't even the thing that stuck out most to me. Even though both Kajder's Chapter 5 and Rozema's "The Book Report 2.0: Podcasting on Young Adult Novels" gave great examples of the ways in which podcasts can be used effectively in the classroom, I found these readings to talk more the idea of making writing mean something.
The quote from eigth-grader, Hank, hit me the most in Kajder's text. He said, in response to his teacher's idea to adapt literature circle discussions to make them into podcasts, "[i]f you want a podcast to mean something, you've got to say something in it that is worth listening to. I'm game for this, but I don't want to hear kids' discussions. Don't school-ify this. We can do better" (Kajder 79, italics added). This, first off, proved that students understand genre and audience much better than we give them credit for. Hank clearly understood what a podcast was, what it should be used for, and what content it should contain. This alone is an opportunity for a lesson.
More than that, though, this statement made me realize just what using podcasts and other multimodal means really do. They make the writing "mean something," and that is what kids really want. Writing solely for school in a world that practically lives off of public writing via the Internet is just not enough. If someone other than the teacher isn't reading it, kids feel like it is worth less. If we can make the writings seem more valuable to students simply by allowing them to post it on a public forum of some sort, I see little reason not to allow them to do this.
Also, I believe that making writings public means so much to students because of the features built into modern social media. They allow you to "like," comment, and re-post content posted there. It gives students the opportunity to receive that peer approval that they seek. I've found myself being rather excited to read my comments on this blog, enough though I never thought I'd feel that way about it. More than that, though, these features, which kids like Hank in Kajder's text push for, allow writing to be an open conversation. It makes text alive.