Williams, Bronwyn T. Shimmering Literacies: Popular
Culture & Reading & Writing Online. New York: Peter Lang
Publishing, 2009. Print.
As the world becomes increasingly
more digital, the education realm becomes more divided as to why and how educators can utilize and explore online
literacy options as a method of teaching. In Shimmering Literacies, part of the “New Literacies
and Digital Epistemologies” series published by Peter Lang
Publishing, Inc., Bronwyn T. Williams discusses his research on how students
maintain active literacy practices online, and how popular culture is the
largest source of their reading and writing. This paper reviews the strengths
and weaknesses of Williams’ approach, the target audience of Shimmering Literacies, and some of the
concerns that may be raised in reaction to Shimmering
Literacies.
Bronwyn T. Williams focuses on how
popular culture has developed into a fully interactive and engaging community
built on shared interests and experiences, and he exposes many unique
perspectives on online literacy and multimodal platforms. Williams presents the
reader with a historical context of popular culture, and attempts to provide
his audience with a clear understanding of reading and writing online through
the lens of modern pop culture. He also presents the audience some reasons
behind why online literacy practices are dominated by popular culture, and how
students develop their digital literacy through these practices. The author wrote Shimmering Literacies to provide a different
perspective on the relationship between literacy and popular culture, and he
explores several literary practices through rhetorical theory and cultural
studies, as he writes on page 3. As a digital immigrant, or a person who was
not raised with digital technology, Bronwyn Williams writes Shimmering Literacies to inform other
digital immigrants about the uses and history of digital media and literacy
online.
Identity is also explicitly discussed
in Shimmering Literacies and remains
the common thread throughout the text. Williams explains how identities can be
formulated through participation in online domains, how discourse varies
between communities, and the personal investment of time and emotion that often
occur online. These variants in domains often draw on the highly interactive
reading and writing that occur constantly in the communities.
Shimmering Literacies was intended primarily for those who may not have knowledge about
popular culture and technology, and want to know how today's generation
participates in literacy activities daily through the use of the internet. As
online literacy activities increase, the need for a study describing how these
digital literacies can be beneficial, and why they have grown to such a large
scale, is important. Lack of knowledge could be greatly blamed on age and
generational distance, meaning the understanding of where values are placed due
to their upbringing and the analysis of differences among the multiple
generations alive today.
For educators, this book can provide
insight on online literacies from the perspective of students and research
studies by Williams. This audience may be comprised of teachers who can
implement the use of pop culture in their classroom, department chairs who may
be looking for new ways to increase student participation in schools, or even
those who are skeptical and wary about incorporating more popular culture
references into the classroom. As the usage of technology grows in the world,
the need for understanding how students interact and use digital communities to
build relationships increases.
When reading Shimmering Literacies there are multiple lenses that the reader can
see through. One perspective is to look through the eyes of a teacher wanting
to understand how using popular culture references through technology could
benefit his or her students. One’s previous
knowledge of the subject could have either been supported or questioned by
reading the text. Other readers may read Shimmering
Literacies through the eyes of a student wanting to learn how reading and
writing have developed through online exposure, and how to implement these
technological resources into the classroom in a balanced way.
I believe the largest and most resonating
lens was through the eyes of a participant in the very same popular culture
that Williams studied. Since I am actively involved in online communities such
as Facebook and LinkedIn, it was initially difficult to read this text with
little subjectivity. As a digital native or a person who was raised
acculturated with digital media and technology, I had trouble really taking
accepted some of the information that Bronwyn was explaining in the book.
Digital natives are already informed about the digital world, and may have
difficulty looking outside of the eyes of being completely embedded in the
technological culture. In order to really understand the context of the book, I
was forced to remove the barriers of previous knowledge and read Shimmering Literacies as it stands; upon
doing this, the intent of the author became clearer.
Active and frequent participation are
both important to online literacy; the keys to effectively understanding how
students use modern technology to develop and understand to popular culture are
thoroughly explained by Williams. The number of people who participate in
domains such as fan forums, social media sites, and other online communities
has not only grown, but the amount of time spent on these sites has increased.
As popular culture has developed from a very local, non-technological entity to
an extremely developed, global network, the audience demanded less of small
town culture, amateur shows, and close proximity. The author states that mass
popular culture must “be nonregional, highly standardized,
and completely commercial” (32).
Shimmering Literacies highlights language use similarly to David Crystal’s Language and the
Internet. Crystal focuses more on the linguistic features of language use
on the internet, and how they compare with other styles of reading and writing.
On page 206, Crystal writes, “The Web is graphically more eclectic
than any domain of written language in the real world. And the same eclecticism
can be seen if we look at the purely linguistic dimensions of written
expression.” Williams’ argument could be strengthened by using even more linguistic
examples in Shimmering Literacies to
provide an example of how reading and writing online can be used in the
classroom, and overcome only looking at how online literacy has a dominant support
from popular culture.
It is well known in the field of
academia that incorporating popular culture references into the classroom is
not traditional. The author includes substantial information on the development
of popular culture, and even outlined some of the dangers. In addition,
Williams should speak about the swiftly changing dynamics of popular culture,
and how this can affect students inside and outside the classroom. Popular
culture is about relevancy; it’s about being cool, famous,
up-to-date on information and styles, and identifying with the current mode of
life.
With the increased use and popularity
of online technology, pop cultural differences have converged into a mass
culture. These popular culture changes can occur overnight with the emergence of
sites like Twitter. Popular culture and online reading and writing change
easily and often. Educators want stability in the material they present to
their students, and that stability is difficult to maintain in an ever-changing
interface.
Along with stability, students need
information that is factual and tested and also well-articulated. Williams does
include analysis and attention to grammar as one of the skills that students
build while reading online texts (56). He writes that fan forums include
critical responses to comments that do not fit the vernacular of the website or
shows lack of knowledge of the topic at hand. But the downfall to using fan
forums and social media sites is that many times the information that is presented
shows little relevancy to the topics covered in academic settings. To an
extent, popular culture can harm the learning environment if not used in a
balanced manner.
These are some challenges that
educators and skeptics are encountering when they are fighting against
incorporating digital literacies and popular culture into classroom curricula. Williams’ detail about fan forums and online communities is good for
an ignorant audience, but lacks support and methods to understanding how it could
be used in a classroom. For a participant in online forums, Shimmering Literacies only builds upon
on the information that they would already know. By incorporating different methods
of application, Williams’ could have informed many more
readers and diversified his audience to include those who are looking more for
methods of teaching with popular culture and online resources.
Overall, Shimmering Literacies was a very informative book about the
practices of literacy online and how they relate to popular culture, and vice
versa. Williams does a great job with outlining some of the research done in
digital literacy practices, and it provides insight on the demographics of
today’s technological revolution. With the evolution of technology,
popular culture has begun to take on different faces, and has reached into
multiple facets of life. The book provides practical information for those who
may not be familiar with online literacy practices and the effects that popular
culture can have on these practices.
I would recommend this book to those
who are interested in a more research based answers to how popular culture and
reading and writing can all affect each other, and how students are utilizing
these tools daily on a large scale. With the developments and studies presented
in Shimmering Literacies, it is
hopeful that the realm of education will not only embrace the use of technology
to promote literacy online, but also find a balance with the interests and
stories that capture the attention of students.
Works Cited
Crystal,
David. Language and the
Internet. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Print.
Williams,
Bronwyn T. Shimmering
Literacies: Popular Culture & Reading & Writing Online. New
York: Peter Lang Publishing, 2009. Print.
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