Joy Bowers-Campbell aims to justify her call that teachers implement online literature “circles” into their classes; however, I do not feel that her evidence supports her claims. She grounds her research in her child’s experience in English classes, but her explorations stands with “teachers or soon-to-be teachers.” She describes the participants of her research as “not surprisingly… discuss[ing] ways their books connected with their own lives, with other texts, and with the large” expressly because of their state as “teachers or soon-to-be-teachers.” (563) The evidence she cites as her rationale for why online literature circles work is predicated on work with teachers who have much experience reading and reading at high levels. Her primary proof is a highly sophisticated means of connection that must be taught. She truly seems to be comparing apples to oranges. Her basis for research lies in primary and secondary education, but her research itself stems from the tertiary classroom. I wish she had explored this technology’s implementation in the middle-school classroom, but she doesn’t. Thus, I have an exceptionally difficult time not considering her points moot.
Campbell concludes by stating that she “found that ‘an energy level in an online learning environment, an energy that is the collective effort expended by a group…’ could not be replicated by face-to-face discussion,” (566) but I wonder how much this energy couldn’t be replicated in a “face-to-face discussion” or how much it simply hadn’t been replicated in her child’s primary school classroom. I have personally seen and personally experienced highly animated and highly engaged classrooms reading deeply and authentically at all levels and all ages, but I have yet to experience authentic online work. I have taken multiple online courses, I have dropped online courses for their lack of engagement and authenticity, and I have laboriously completed online tasks I hated for many classes. I have felt online discussions and blogs feel superficially contrived much more frequently than I have enjoyed or benefited from such activities; thus, I wonder how much of Cambell’s evidence stems from the mode of communication versus the age and experience of the communicator.
Contrarily, Matsuko Woo’s study takes place in English Language Learners’ (ELL) fifth grade classroom in China. Woo too fights for the use of online collaboration and describes it as being preferred by students but doesn’t stop to explain what the other option is or how they compare. There is no connection to benefiting one way from x and now this way from y, there is simply an explanation of what is now supposedly preferred. Furthermore, Woo doesn’t really explain what is done and surprisingly never stops to explain what a wiki is until his penultimate paragraph.
Nevertheless, there are directly applicable resources to the classroom found here. Kelly has taken to provide the framework within which one can easily set up entire class communication via Google Drive and a helpful, ready to use breakdown of how to use Drive in a convenient handout for students. Furthermore, there is a video that explains exactly what Drive is and how it could prove helpful, for those who are unaware. Fortunately, Drive directly combats one of Woo’s student’s primary concerns that “it would be better if [sh]e could set restrictions of who could edit [her] page and who could not” (87). As delineated in the lay-person friendly video and quickly ascertained through use of the application, Drive affords users the ability to establish others as able to “view, edit, or comment.” This platform directly addresses this student’s, and my own, primary problem with wikis.