Since Language and Literacy is my area of expertise ( I see educational technology as a form of literacy), I suppose it’s time for me to step up and declare Borderland to be the original K-12 Literacy blog. If there are others out there maybe someone will point me to them. We could get a conversation going and share the wealth. In the meantime I’ll do my best to cover what is admittedly an overwhelmingly huge arena for investigation. It’s true, I haven’t said anything about reading and writing workshop, guided reading, differentiated instruction, multiple literacies, or learning styles - but I will.

Miguel writes in a recent blog entry

Maybe I’m not looking in the right places, but now I know what it is that I’m NOT reading…it’s the contributions of the C&I folks…or at least, what I think they should be contributing. Where is there mention of differentiated classrooms? What about Understanding by Design? What about reading/writing workshop, learning theories, multiple intelligences, and all that stuff? If I’m right–and these things only exist in derivative form in ed-tech blogs–then there’s a real need for folks who know about this stuff to write about it, and how it’s impacting their teaching.

I echo Miguel’s desire to hear from more educators who are knowledgeable about progressive literacy education. And I’m grateful to him for helping me recognize that I could be more explicitly focused in my purpose for this blog.

Alan Levine posted a gripe he has with sites that don’t offer a short explanation of what they’re about - where it’s easy to find. I realized that I qualified, but I wasn’t sure that it mattered until I read Miguel’s piece. Consequently, I added a new line to my blog header and I’m going to narrow my focus just a bit. I’ve been writing about literacy for the last few months, but it may not have been apparent to anyone else! Literacy is a big topic. I’ve been preoccupied with my expansive view of the subject. I’ll see what happens if I try to come back to down to earth a little bit.

Many thanks to Alan and Miguel, who’ve offered me some things to think about lately. My next post (the one I’m working on) will be a brief history of literacy, and will contextualize my interest in this weblog space.