Cinnabar and Alabaster

passages:
45. Gee's quote ("One does not learn to read texts of type X in way Y unless one has had experience in settings where tests of type X are read in way Y...")
47. technology offers ways of sharing texts w/many people that allow learners to learn from peripheral participation, by seeing with more immediacy the writing that goes on in the community they're entering and sharing their successive approximations of it.
61. list of "studies show" benefits offered by "computer-assisted classroom discussion":

• "reduces social context clues" (gender, handicap, etc.)
• "reduces dynamic cues" (teachers frowning, etc.) that might intimidate speakers
• allows students control over pacing--more aggressive students don't get to dominate, & no one has to seek permission to join
• greater student participation compared to teacher-led discussions
• encourages a combination of "interaction and reflection"
• "every verbalization can be seen as an act of collaborative authoring"

70. it's not the way to do everything & shouldn't replace f2f interaction; computer-based discussions aren't good ways to arrive at consensus, for example.
76. teachers need to remember when pushing students into participation in public forums that there are risks--some listserv responders are jerks, for example.
80. Bahktin & dialogism: "language is a continuous generative process implemented in the social-verbal interaction of speakers"; "echoes and reverberations"; "many have speculated that it is in the electronic era that Bakhtin's ideas are seeing their fullest and clearest expression"

top 5: Gee, Bahktin, Volosinov, Lave & Wenger, Nystrand, et. al.