Like I said, the blogs were not a factor in me learning anything really. The textbook and the classroom activities were but the blogs were not. (Anonymous focus group participant)In the digital age of Facebook, Twitter, Wikis, and blogging, it seems only natural to integrate digital literacies in preservice teacher education programs. We chose blogs as a pedagogical tool in our content-area literacy classes for preservice teachers, hoping to help them engage in discussions that were closely aligned with the course content while building classroom communities.The blogging project was borne from a Quality Enhancement Program (QEP) with funding received by the first two authors. As part of the project, a longitudinal study (two and a half years) was carried out on the effectiveness of integrating blogs into our content literacy classrooms. Though we have rarely read published studies on projects that were deemed "failures," this is what our project appeared to be.As we studied the quantitative results semester after semester, the blogs statistically had no measurable impact on students' perceptions of the course or content literacy. Granted, students were generally pleased with the content of the course, but there was no statistical significance found in relation to the blogging itself, no matter what was done to try and make the blogs more useful to students. In fact, students typically cited the blogs as the least important tool in their learning the course content.As teachers, however, we had absorbed the discourses (Fairclough, 2001;Gee, 1999) surrounding technology and the classroom, and we were curious about why students did not respond well to the blogs. We assumed that this generation of tech-savvy students would enjoy this particular medium for discussing their reading. After all, weren't these the students who were supposed to love any sort of technological intervention? Weren't these supposed to be the students who were anticipating the myriad ways that they could incorporate technology into their future content classrooms?

Purpose The purpose of this paper was to highlight ways two novice secondary English teachers negotiated the politics of college and career readiness along with the literacy needs of students, in the age of accountability. Design/methodology/approach This three-year longitudinal qualitative case study focused on two participants in English teacher preparation and their first two years in the classroom. Findings The findings focus on participants’ definitions of college and career readiness as it pertains to their English Language Arts classrooms. Next, the focus is on two themes: tensions these novice teachers experienced as they attempted to build classrooms focused on postsecondary readiness, and the ways in which they worked to bridge the gap between their definitions of college and career readiness and the realities of their classrooms. Research limitations/implications Connections among high stakes testing environments, postsecondary readiness and literacy teacher education are important to the field. Studying the experiences of novice teachers can fill a present gap at the intersection of these concepts. Practical implications Curriculum in teacher education should introduce standards, as well as provide a platform for negotiating and critiquing them. Three focus areas to help pre-service teachers mitigate tensions between minimum skills assessments, college readiness and literacy are personal experience, collaboration and reflective partnerships. Originality/value There has been little to no research done on the tensions between preparing all students to be college and career ready and the minimum skills based priorities that govern many school systems and its impact on novice teachers. This classroom reality is important to literacy teacher education.

This is a post-peer-review, pre-copyedit version of an article published in The Urban Review.

Countering reactionary attempts to ban social media from schools is a strong research based rationale for bringing social media into the literacy classroom. When used as a medium to explore literature—or more specifically for interactive character journaling—this medium exemplifies how meaning is created by individuals' interactions with texts, by the prior knowledge they bring to their reading, and by the negotiation of meaning by participants in this digital “third space.” Used this way, social media can scaffold reading, promote critical discussions about texts, prompt basic sociohistorical research, and engage students in examining discourse, and provide an authentic venue for students to practice code‐switching. This study highlights that social media is anything but an educational distraction; rather, when used appropriately it can serve as an engaging and interactive foray into socially‐mediated literacy and constructivist learning.

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