Propelling Research

 Researchers need to shift their focus from researching females and mostly Europeans in the writing classroom.  Researchers need to begin to focus on other culture identities of students to continue to enhance the writing classroom.

            More teachers need to understand their student’s social identity before they are able to fully attempt to meet the needs of their students. The research conducted in “Tech- Savviness” meets multiliteracies: Exploring adolescent girls” technology- mediated literacy practices article shows how understanding students culture identities further enhances learning and social skills in the classroom

Then Olcott and Mahr begin to make their  focus of the experiment clear. They demonstrated how their experiment participant’s choice in “tools” constructed their identities in their work outside of the classroom. Then they listed their primary focus group, which were adolescent girls. After that they stated what their mission was which was to show how understanding the selected girls identities through their choice of “tools”, showed how these girls learn and respond socially.

 Finally one of the last major elements that the Olcott and Mahr go over is activity theory, which is defined as “individuals actions in the context of broader historical and culture factor”(Olcott and Mahr 362). Introducing the activity theory in this experiment continues to place value that students are individuals, and their learning is influenced by their history and culture.  Using the activity theory in classrooms could prove as a great success for teachers because their message could reach more students then a generic message for all students.

           What makes this experiment distinctive is that gender has been explored before but this experiment explored it in depth that this is a positive direction for research but it could be even better if researchers focused on culture identities.  It takes more than just saying someone is a boy or a girl to fully comprehend them or their learning style The article Men Are From Earth and So Are Women. It’s Faculty Research That Sets Them Apart  talks about on the college campus how it’s easy for professors to make generalization of both sexes that are widely accepted with no research evidence to support it. If this idea that professors are making statements of gender in the classroom then, it is highly possible that this can be happening in our lower division schools.  Olcott and Mahr are saying that through really knowing how their gender identity is constructed you can learn so much more about an individual.    

            By Olcott and Mahr focusing on the research subjects more in depth further brings the point of how culture identity can be brought alive in the classroom. Though there were twelve girls in the experiment the participated in the research but the findings only decided to really focus on two. The first girl was Rhiannon and she “was the only girl to teach herself programming languages”. Rhiannon knowledge of programming knowledge was something that she did not like to share in the classroom. She was afraid that students or guys wouldn’t find her appealing as a friend or girlfriend if they knew about her skills.  Though Rhiannon possessed fear of her talent she didn’t let her challenges stop her from practicing her skills. She overcame the lack tools needed to sometimes create her work at home by going to school early and working on her project there. What she couldn’t do at school she completed at home.

Eilen was a little different though learning how to use certain technologies like a scanner to upload her drawings she was able to receive feedback on her work. At first she didn’t quite understand how feedback worked in the community she was apart of. Once she caught the hang of it she was able to “transform the internet” through helping others that were new to her community.

Both these girls were picked on and were not the most sociable students. The experiment points out if teachers only knew that these girls posed wonderful technology skills then they could make peer mentorships. Through mentorships these girls could help their classmates learning excel and build better social skills. In the article Peer Teaching and Review: A model for writing and Development and knowledge synthesis  this technique of mentorship was a success.

As “Tech- Savviness” meets multiliteracies: Exploring adolescent girls” technology- mediated literacy practices states we need more research to be conducted on “race, ethnicity and language status”. The experiment completed was predominately “95 percent European American decent”.  Its through not only researching females and mostly Europeans that we will be able to see tactics to develop reading and writing, but through focusing on other culture identities of students techniques will be able to be developed to further enhance student writing skills. It is time to propel our research further in the field of writing.