Media Ecology and Learning Case Study - Rough Draft

Link to Media Ecology and Learning Case Study Rough Draft - pdf
Link to Media Ecology and Learning Case Study Rough Draft - Google Drive

Changing Literacies; Changing Pedagogies

Chapter 7: 

" Such experience could equip them to consider ways in which teacher-learner relationships could be reconfigured, and to find practical ways of using technology transformatively in the classroom." (Burnett, 2009, Pg. 121) 

This quote needs to be prefaced by the rest of the paragraph. It is the last sentence. However, we should hope that pre-teachers or student teachers or any teachers  would use their experience to equip them. I like this quote because even though they don't think their personal technology experience is necessarily equipping them, it is. I'm sure every teacher can look back over the week and come up with several examples of something in their lives, in or out of school, that helped them in the teacher-learner relationships they had that week. 

Chapter 8: 

"The goal should be to provide those emerging educators with enhanced knowledge and experience to enable them to participate in a regeneration of literacy teaching that takes account of the two 'multis' referred to at the beginning of this article: multimodality and multiple ways of being and acting in the world." (Kerin, 2009, Pg. 142-143) 

Supports my beliefs and my actions of Professional Development for current teachers. If they don't know, they can't teach it to the students. 

Chapter 9: 

". . . how do we imagine the relationship of so-called 'new literacies' (Lankshear and Knobel, 2003) to more conventional print-based literacies? In broad strokes, we can describe four common stances on this relationship that are part of our current teaching and research imaginations: resistance, replacement, return and remediation." (Leander, 2009, Pg. 147) 

I found it interesting to read the paragraphs that followed this quote describing these four stances. I have teachers in my building that fit in all four categories. Quite interesting to think about when mixing the old with the new.

My Personal Digital Literacies

The main example of using digital technologies that reflect digital practices outside of school that I use is research on the Internet. But since I think everyone does this I'm going to use an example from my church activities. I work with children's ministries at my church. My husband is the minister and my daughter is the family life co-ordinator. You might say I am a technology assistant to both. I have had the opportunity to use images to display meanings during many presentations for and with both of them. The most recent was the "Potter and the Clay" scripture and this image.  I didn't really think about it until I was participating in the service and had a chance to actually watch it take place. It dawned on me I was using this image to convey a message. I really don't ever look at a similar image without thinking about how we are molded by God.

I also use a website "sermons4kids.com" that follows the lectionary. I download the children's bulletin, print it and e-mail the link for the activities to the person in charge of Children's Church that Sunday. Twenty years ago I subscribed to a company that would send a booklet. After getting two full cycles of years A, B & C, I stopped the subscription and reused the booklets. About six years ago I found this website with up-to-date messages.   

I feel better prepared after two classes from Dr. Lindstrom to help teachers design, construct and critique digital text than I would have a year ago. This will be an ongoing professional development I will present to the teachers at my school. I think this will help them in their classes with their students. 

During a digital literacy lesson the group of 12th graders I worked with created memes to convey their knowledge. I used the required topic of Cyber Bullying and this podcast from NPR 

http://www.npr.org/2015/03/31/396413638/publicly-shamed-who-needs-the-pillory-when-weve-got-twitter 

  

Here is a meme a student created.

Illuminated Text

Analyzed Young Person Interview

Hanging Out: How did your young person’s use of computers reflect friendship driven practices and facilitate social interaction between their peers? 

Joseph – He didn’t volunteer any social interaction between his peers. Although he did check his phone twice while I was talking with his sister. It was being charged on the other side of the room, so I noticed his movement. However, he did not text since it was a quick check. He did indicate he didn’t really want to know what other people were doing on Facebook. Which lead me to believe he didn’t really know much about the privacy settings.

Taylor – She brought her phone into the room with her, but didn’t check it that I noticed. She did indicate that she and her friends followed musicians and that she used texting, Snapchat, Instagram, and twitter to communicate with her friends. Not a lot of Facebook.

Messing Around: How did your young person’s use of computers provide them with informal learning opportunities to develop tech savvy skill sets? 

Both siblings said they either learned it from watching friends or figured it out themselves. I would say this is informal learning but not necessarily learning tech savvy skills. I guess they could transfer what they learned on or in the particular types of technology to other types of technology. Both indicated they didn’t know much about Office 365. I don’t think what they do on out-of-school time would necessarily help them with the apps in Office 365.

Geeking Out: Has your young person developed a particular interest or highly specialized skill set as a result of their use of computers at home and school? 

I would say Taylor knows how to create Memes and really enjoys them. At the time I interviewed her I didn’t think about asking if she would like to use them with school work.

Schooling : Does your young person talk about use of traditional literacy practices like using correct spelling vs text messaging lingo? Reading books over use of the computer? Writing in traditional genres like poetry or essays? Conducting research for personal or school related purposes?

It was obvious that Joseph would rather read a book than use the computer. He was playing Dungeons and Dragons with books and paper. I think he was waiting for a text reply from a friend about the game they were playing. I asked him a couple days later if he thought he would play D&D on line if his laptop was faster and he said, “Probably not.”

Although Taylor didn’t mention anything about books, she was reading and composing on the two sites she told me about, livejournal.com and wattpad.com She didn't talk about correct spelling vs text messaging lingo. I'll ask her about that next time I see her and add to my interview information.

Changing Literacies

Chapter 4 - Wikis:

"The ways in which wikis are taken up and used in classrooms are also dependent on how teachers see interpret the world outside the classroom." (Carrington, 2009, Pg. 75) 

In my county a wiki space is provided within the LMS we started using last school year. To my knowledge none of the teachers used it. I didn't get any questions about it. The tech savvy teachers probably wouldn't have asked before using it. I didn't hear any students talking about it, but I might have just not been in the correct setting to learn about it. This is one of the places I will concentrate on this year while conducting training for our LMS.

Chapter 5 - Blogs:

"Both of these examples show how classroom projects can use the affordances of blogs to support learning. The second example also show how teachers could benefit from the experience as well. . . . Nevertheless the vignettes presented here show authentic blogging practices (that is to say, blogging that reflects everyday or 'real-world' uses of blogs) that are carefully interwoven with classroom learning." (Davies and Merchant, 2009, Pg. 90-91) 

This is the connection students and teachers need to effectively use technology in their classrooms. Blogging is easily done. It does have to be monitored by the teacher, though. I have had teachers create a form with appropriate dos and don'ts of blogging to help with this. It is very real world. In the Prologue of this chapter we read how Julie uses critical literacy strategies to verify authenticity. This is very important to teach to students who are using blogs (and wikis).

This is the one I would most likely use in class. I think it can be used in student learning, student research and teaching students to determine whether it is valid information. I think all three would address the CCS by using critical thinking skills in all subjects, not just ELA and Math. After seeing the students struggle with performance tasks in the WV General Summative Assessment, I think this is a good place to concentrate.

Chapter 6 - Virtual Worlds:

"At the same time, we recognized that many of the students would draw on their experiences of video-gaming when interacting with the virtual world."(Merchant, 2009, Pg. 104) 

This quote jumped out at me because of the Curriculum in the New Media Age class I'm taking this summer also. I can see this might cause a problem with a gaming type environment, but couldn't we also use simulators and games already designed for learning? Perhaps our CTE teachers would be able to suggest current ones. I used a driving simulator when I took Driver's Ed in high school. I've used games such as SimCity, Oregon Trail, Lemonade Stand, etc. to help students think critically. Connecting this idea of bringing in prior knowledge would be a  the paragraph on Pg. 107 in our text that talks about students bringing in their prior literacy practices during the virtual world game play.  

I found the "Challenges for Teachers" section very worthy of thought and discussion in the chapter. 

 Carrington, V., & Robinson, M. (2009). Digital literacies: Social learning and classroom practices. Los Angeles: SAGE Publications.  

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Young Person Interview

I interviewed two siblings to compare their technology uses and views. This is the link to the spread sheet in my Google Drive.

Young Person Interview

My thoughts about connections to our texts:
One chapter talked about a girl using a blog site for stories. Chapter 5 Digital Natives (?)
Students aren't using technology available to them if the teachers aren't trained or aren't willing to use it.

Digital Literacies:
Pg. 30 ". . . social networking sites mainly patronized by teenagers who use these online spaces to instant message, keep blogs, upload photographs, exchange music files, and much more."

Digital Natives:

“Technological infrastructure, therefore, does play a part in supporting learning either “on task” and “off task,” and poor infrastructure leads to a loss of time that students are engaged in learning.” (Thomas, 2011, p. 94)

"From our analysis, it is also evident that regardless of their technical fluency, students still require traditional skills for successful task completion." (Thomas, 2011, p. 95)



“Using the Internet does not automatically guarantee participation in the information society, hence assistance is required in order to engage them in relevant activities."  (Thomas, 2011, p. 148)

"Some may argue that the integration undertaken in these case studies falls short of radically changing education to be more like the everyday world, but the very issue highlighted by such studies is that the context of formal education, with its particular values and practices, is different from informal and non-formal contexts."(Thomas, 2011, p. 177)

Digital Texts in and out of School

Introduction:

"It is  time our classrooms became places where digital and print literacies come together to allow children opportunities to develop the skills and attitudes they will need to navigate complex urban sites and social forms." (2009, Pg. 3) 

This statement was written in 2009. It appears the UK had this idea and followed through with it. I think the US needs to follow suit. I feel it would be almost necessary to provide professional development to teachers that is similar to this class in order to be able to bring it properly into the classrooms. I don't know how to do that in the time allotted for PD by the county. I think I could develop something that would work and do it over the year, perhaps in the provided PLC time.

Chapter 1:  

 "Although digital technologies may be enabling modes of learning such as trial and error, it is important to look at other modes of learning in relation to these technologies. A closer study also may provide information about the kinds of things that are learnt effectively through trial and error or  

technology enhanced scaffolding, and those that require more direct kinds of instruction." (2009, Pg. 19) 

When I first read this quote I was reminded for factoring quadratics. When I read it the second time I reflected on a blended learning class I taught this spring where the students thought they knew office 365 well enough to use it, so while I was showing them ways to use it and navigate through it, several of them tuned me out. Therefore they used trial and error until frustration set in and they asked for help. Actually I have used programs and  apps this way. As I interviewed for my case study, I got the impression that was the way my subjects learned their "out of school" technology also.

Chapter 2: 

"With a greater emphasis on context and literacy in practice, we can extend the notion of textuality.  Further, in exploring meanings, we can take into account not just the written word, but also images, layout, font, sound, gesture, movement and so on." (2009, Pg. 30) 

This "textuality" is an interesting word. Having students use this type of multimodal communication in school should be a "no brainer" except they seem to have trouble knowing what is appropriate for education/in school (more formal environment) and what is appropriate for out of school (informal environment). I feel that the teachers in my high school do care what students put on social media about themselves and how it will affect them in the usually near future. It is just hard to reach them and teach them since they have been using it for so long. 

Chapter 3: 

"In and around school, new digital textual possibilities mean that teachers and students increasingly recognize that text production can be a multimodal endeavour, where words, images, music and sound can combine to create rich texts that are driven by a desire to communicate powerfully and appropriately within a given medium." (2009, Pg. 50)

 Carrington, V., & Robinson, M. (2009). Digital literacies: Social learning and classroom practices. Los Angeles: SAGE Publications.  

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