Moby Dick Is Dead: The

Search For The Modern

Reader
10/21/2012, Terry Heick,

Like thinking, reading in the 21st century is different than in centuries past, endlessly linked in
an increasingly visible web of physical and digital media forms.
So in this context of media abundance, what does the modern, 21st century look like? How can
we appeal to their interests?
Ive got a short eBook on this very topic coming out next month, but I thought I might preface
the idea here, with all of you.

Media Design in the 21st Century

There is an art and a science to media design.
Media (singular medium) is simply a method for the intentional communication of a thought or
idea. In this way, tweets and novels are both media, as are poems and interactive timelines,
websites and short stories, paintings and graffiti, speeches and YouTube channels.
The differences between these media lie in their purpose and audience, duration and intensity,
tone and structure, along with countless other obvious and less-obvious components that can be
artfully manipulated in matters of design. One of the most visible transitions to a 21st Century
Reading and Writing curriculum (or, as we consider it, authentic curriculum) involves an
evolution of the perspective of media.
Media is, and always has been, central to an Reading-Writing curriculum. Moby Dick, The Road
Not Taken, To Kill A Mockingbird, etc. These are often referred to as touchstone texts that can
act as anchors for so much. An initial, basic recommendation then would involve how teachers
select that media that ends up center stage in so many lessons and units.
This is important to clarify: the media is the star here, and an educators goal is to support
students in processing that media: identifying, analyzing, evaluating, revising, re-purposing, and
so on up Blooms ladder. (Well skip, for now, the potential for learners to be in control of the
media they consume.) Beyond that basic, tell-me-something-I-dont-know recommendation to be
intentional in choosing powerful, relevant, and fertile media, there must first be a necessary
paradigm shift in how we consider the term media.
Moby Dick is dead.
Moby Dick absolutely has a place in a Reading/Writing/Literature-based curriculum, but in new
forms, with new support systems, with new-found and increasingly visible relevancy.
Moby Dick needs an app.
MEDIA AS A TERM

When computers first entered mainstream (back when Radio Shack was selling Tandy computers
for $8500), the term multi-media surfaced. As opposed to the single-media of a text-only
novel, now text, sound, images, and video could be combined and manipulated in new ways.
Somewhere along the line, however, Reading/Writing/Literature stopped simply leveraging these
classic texts, but seemingly became owned by them. (What happened to the idea of separate
literature, composition, or even logic classesnot necessarily full-on triumvirate, but in that
direction?)
Class reads of Fahrenheit 451 transitioned into Literature Circles reading The Giver, book reports
melted into PowerPoint presentations or even web quests, but the central kernel was still a text
written generationseven centuries agoin a form by people from a time much different than the
one learners use information in today. This is not to say that such media are impotent, but
merely out of focus, and so must be leveraged in new ways while seeking out relevance with an
innocent audience disconnected from its forms, its structures, and its media patterns.

Changing forms of media are a byproduct of rapid technology progression, and this is certainly
the case over the last 25 years. In the last 5 years, the emergence of social media has added an
additional wrinkle (and countless teaching opportunities) to the mix, yet with these transitions
and this constant evolution, the red herring here involves the misleading concept of technology.
We will have a look at the changing media forms, especially the phenomenon of social media in
a separate piece, but for now consider that technology is a tool that enables new forms of media
to evolve, challenge our collective creativity, and push the boundaries of idea exchange forward.
However, it is simply thata tool. While it is tempting to become enamored with the glamour of
the tool itself, it is the cognitive and creative work and design that really demand our attention as
educators. If mankind walked away from technology tomorrow, to maintain authenticity in
learning would require adapting our curriculum, our instructional strategies, and so on to
eliminate technology; rather than teach technology then, we teach with technology.
That is to say, educators use technology because those we wish to educate use it, which brings us
to the idea of schema.
Media as Schema

There are staggeringly interesting philosophical treatises and cognitive psychology analyses from
Kant to Piaget that deal with the concept of schema. A (sometimes frustratingly) ambiguous term
(that Marzano addresses briefly in The Art and Science of Teaching, (p. 59-60), schema refers
to a cognitively native framework for making sense of ideas; that is, roughly put, existing stuff
in our head helps us to make sense of new stuff. (A tangent concept is one of prior knowledge.)
That is, we cannot make sense new ideas unless we can assimilate them with what we already
knowby observing, analyzing, merging, comparing, contrasting, categorizing, relating, or
otherwise forming some relative relationship.
In this way, a square helps us understand a rectangle, Cat in the Hat providing a sort of early
framework to help us make sense of Flannery OConnors Everything That Rises Must Converge.
This constructivist line of thought reveals that, at least to some degree, learners continually build
on existing ideas through the aforementioned observing>relating process, even when ideas and
concepts may seem divergent (verbs and allegory).

So what does this have to do with media and ELA? Simply put, weve gotten behind the curve in
terms of how we view media, and, on a broader scale, how we view the purpose of EnglishLanguage Arts.
In Developing Minds: A Resource Book for Teaching Thinking edited by Art Costa, Barry Beyer
contributes:
Because thinking skills are tied closely (in learners minds) to the context or content in which
they are first encountered, their application is not readily transferred to the other, especially
remote contexts or content. (398-399)
Beyer goes on to discuss the practices of Continuous Bridging and Direct Transfer. Here,
Beyer is trying to underscore first transfer as a pedagogical reality, and then finally begin laying
the groundwork for teaching students so that they are able to do it themselves. While this is part
and parcel to all learning, formal and informal, it relates to our concept of media in EnglishLanguage Arts in that we often ask students to walk too far in this transfer.

Why not dwell in their native media? If we can for a moment resist making this a generational
argument where we browbeat texting and cell phones and glorify novels, but rather, in the
ultimate meet them where they are, rethinking and re-approaching roles so that students dont
have to radically repackage information that they learning in school on a daily basis to make it
relevant to their personal lives. Admonishing that a student learn math so that they can balance
their checkbook is a vacant argument.
Moby Dicks themes of introspection, intellectual struggle, and religious doubt are all indeed
relevant if we can just give them a chance. So then, we may consider Moby Dick a single image
in a rich tapestry, rather than a single image and a single goal. In this way teachers can use the
interdependence of all media forms to their advantageone form to illuminate another,
Structure. Theme. Bias. Syntax. Diction. Author position. Supporting evidenceall universal
components of media design.

And we should do this not simply because teachers can then use these forms to trick students into
learning what we want them to, but because were actually teaching what matters. (Teaching
What Matters by Silver, Strong, and Perini remains what should be considered a seminal,
prefacing work on all matters of curriculum mapping and instructional design.)
That is, we can support students in identifying media forms and structures, concepts of audience
and purpose, thesis and thesis development, language choice, tone and moodall classic literary
tenetsbut rethink our how we use the concept of media to make that happen.
Conclusion

The 21st Century Reading/Writing/Literature teacher does not blindly adopt technology, nor do
they reject Shakespeare, but rather consistently seeks out authenticity in all matters of education,
beginning with curriculum.

They seek to creatively leveragethrough merging old and new in novel ways, through project
and problem-based learning, or any number of other approachesto not simply engage
learners, which is insufficient, but rather immerse learners in intellectually rigorous and
interesting media-centered environments where relevancy is immediately visible, transfer is
persistent, and students move away from traditional roles of passive recipient to adopt new
perspectives as active and self-monitoring, self-serving users of varied information on a global
scale.
Moby Dick, then, isnt so much dead as eagerly seeking an audience with the 21st Century
learner, and it is our charge as educatorsthrough technology, a new emphasis on schema, and a
new purpose for intellectual, cultural, and media diversityto creatively accommodate that. If
this happens, school will stop becoming school, a sterile domain of formal thought and
content, and become a flexible system that will support learners in becoming media-proficient
that is, curious and literate users of information.
Something that seems to be forgotten in the content versus skills, 21st century versus core or
classic education argument is the learner, and their native context. The role of play and the idea
of informal learning are powerful, underutilized concepts absolutely crucial as we seek to
innovate what is, at best, the mediocre industry of reading and writing public education.