FB

Ooo ooo ooo!!! I liked this piece, I really liked it. Maybe because I worked in digital strategy for two years and all we focused on was the rhetorical approaches you could take with social media (as it helped our clients brand themselves online to complement/supplemental traditional marketing). I also find it ridiculous that many people/teachers/scholars/intellects (or so called intellects - btw I was once told if you have to say you are 'intellectual' then you are not actually 'intellectual' - END.RANT.) cannot seem to find the significance of analyzing social media platforms from an academic standpoint. It is after all composition - digital composition - digital AND public composition.

First I would like to turn your attention to the quote in Mathison-Fife's first paragraph:

"Literacy practices that fall outside the realm of traditional academic writing, like Facebook, can easily be seen as a threat to print literacy by teachers, especially when they sneak into the classroom uninvited as students check their Facebook profiles instead of participating in class discussions and activities" (1).

I, of course, understand where these teachers are coming from - but I think they wrongly accuse FACEBOOK as the culprit. Would they not be just as frustrated if their students were reading a comic book instead of participating in class discussion? What about a young adult novel? Or any novel, or piece of print literature that was not relevant for their class? When I was in high school I was the student that would read a different book inside of my text book to make it look like I was reading for class when in fact I was re-reading The Crucible or any of Sarah Dessen's disgustingly mushy young adult novels (I admit it...).

Overall it just seems like there is a negative perception of Facebook because it is what students are spending a majority of their timing doing - thus Facebook is deemed as a "distraction" when in reality students are going to be distracted by SOMETHING to avoid doing work whether it's Facebook or books. What we need to focus on is exactly what Mathison-Fife is - taking the things students are spending their time on and incorporate it into class. This is a way to engage them, make them think critically in class, and also make them think critically outside of class.