Penrod, Diane 1958- (Diane Marie Penrod)

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Penrod, Diane 1958- (Diane Marie Penrod)

PERSONAL:

Born October 27, 1958, in Buffalo, NY; daughter of Melvin E. and Nancy A. Penrod; married. Education: Medaille College, B.S., 1980; State University of New York, Oswego, M.Ed., 1989; Syracuse University, M.A., 1992, Ph.D., 1994.

ADDRESSES:

Office—Department of Writing Arts, College of Communication, Rowan University, 201 Mullica Hill Rd., Glassboro, NJ 08028. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Writer, editor, and educator. Jones Colad, Inc., Buffalo, NY, industrial sales representative, 1982-85. JCHD Advertising, Amherst, NY, copywriter and media buyer, 1980. Marketing consultant, Buffalo, NY, 1980-86. Bryan and Stratton Business Institute, Clay, NY, instructor, 1987-91; State University of New York at Oswego, instructor, 1989, 1994; Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY, instructor, 1989-94; Rowan University, Glassboro, NJ, associate professor, 1994-2004, professor, 2004—; Communications Institute, Center for Research, director, 1997-99; National Writing Project, site director.

MEMBER:

Modern Language Association, National Council of Teachers of English, American Association of University Women.

WRITINGS:

(Editor) Miss Grundy Doesn't Teach Here Anymore: Popular Culture and the Composition Classroom, Boynton/Cook Publishers (Portsmouth, NH), 1997.

Composition and Convergence: The Impact of New Media on Writing Assessment, L. Erlbaum (Mahwah, NJ), 2005.

Using Blogs to Enhance Literacy: The Next Powerful Step in 21st-Century Learning, Rowman & Littlefield Education (Lanham, MD), 2007.

SIDELIGHTS:

Writer, editor, and English educator Diane Penrod has worked as an advertising copywriter, a media buyer, and a package design sales representative, noted a biographer on the Heinemann Books Web site. As an assistant professor at the College of Communication at Rowan University in New Jersey, Penrod teaches courses in college writing and communications studies. As an academic, Penrod conducts research in areas such as writing assessment, media literacy and popular culture, qualitative and quantitative research methods, and the meaning of "post" in postmodernism, reported a biographer on the Rowan University, College of Communication Web site.

Penrod is also interested in harnessing modern technology as a teaching and learning tool. To this end, she sees the proliferation of Web logs and blogging as a vehicle for reaching students with a technology they find appealing, and in the process teaching them vital language and communication skills. In Using Blogs to Enhance Literacy: The Next Powerful Step in 21st-Century Learning, Penrod explores the possibilities and potentials of blogs as a teaching and literacy tool. In an interview with Debra Lau Whelan in the School Library Journal, Penrod reported that blogging results in improved skills in visual and media literacy. Improvements in language "fluency rates, information sorting, and evaluating happen, too," she stated. In addition, "Having students learn how to build a blog teaches them necessary design and conceptual abilities that can transfer to art, photography, graphic design, writing, and other contemporary information-manipulation strategies. Blog building also helps students understand how technology works from the ground up," Penrod told Whelan.

Penrod believes that blogging is a means whereby students of all races and economic backgrounds can communicate and exchange ideas on an equal basis. The availability of free blogging sites and software, the ease of use of blogging technology, and the growing accessibility of computers and online access elevate Web logs to an egalitarian status not seen in other forms of communication. She encourages teachers and administrators to move beyond any fear or distrust of unfamiliar technology, to learn how to guide students and keep them safe online, and overcome any hesitancy to embrace blogging as a teaching tool and even as a personal means of communication and expression.

Penrod also addresses the topic of technology in teaching, learning, and communication in Composition and Convergence: The Impact of New Media on Writing Assessment. In this book, she looks at how new technologies such as interactive, computer-based writing tools have changed the way that literacy has traditionally been taught, and offered teachers an unprecedented chance to "create new models for thinking and writing," noted a reviewer in Reference & Research Book News.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Choice, September, 2005, D. Mason, review of Composition and Convergence: The Impact of New Media on Writing Assessment, p. 95.

Reference & Research Book News, August, 2005, review of Composition and Convergence, p. 243; May, 2007, "Using Blogs to Enhance Literacy; the Next Powerful Step in 21st-century Learning."

School Library Journal, October 9, 2007, Debra Lau Whelan, "SLJ Chats with Diane Penrod about Using Blogs to Enhance Literacy."