Researching New Literacies: Web 2.0 Practices and Insider Perspectives by Colin Lankshear and Michele Knobel

Lankshear and Knobel raise the issue of pirating with respect to cultural creation. Copyright infringements can become a large problem when working within a classroom in a multimodal environment and educators need to be aware, and make their students aware, of the appropriate ways to use others work within their own. If you look at how the arts are traditionally taught (or even other subject areas), there is an element of reproduction that needs to happen, whether it be reproducing an artist’s song with a band, trying out a particular art technique, or putting on a production of a play. Learning through reproduction can be an important learning process that individuals may need to explore to solidify their own understanding. It would merely be impossible to ask permission for all of your students to use preexisting works in their own work. The question then becomes how much of a preexisting work is too much? How much, or in which ways, does something need to be modified in order to call it your own? I believe that the reuse of others’ work and copyright issues lie on a very fine line and many times, how we use this work can be questionable. Using preexisting materials is important but we need to teach our students’ to be mindful of copyright infringement when allowing them to use these materials in their work. Another question that this raises for me is how do we teach this to our students, especially the younger ones that would have little to no experience with understanding the law? I suppose discussing issues like this would be a good start, but where do we go from there?

Lankshear and Noble state that “learners who have grown up on the inside of a cyberspatial mindset often see things very differently, and approach them very differently”. These types of people are highly functional when multitasking. I question that if this ability could end up being another process of evolution or if it is simply an external environmental factor that is acting up these younger generations. If individuals participate in many tasks successfully at the same time then they will be better prepared for the world outside of education. Allowing students to have the option to multitask would be extremely beneficial to individuals with A.D.H.D. Multitasking will allow these students to keep their hands busy (or even their minds busy) which can help them concentrate. However, are all students able to adapt to this type of environment or could it be devastating to their learning? Would it be best if we allowed students the option of how to do work? Would this eliminate all senses of classroom management, or would it just be shaped and formed in new ways to accommodate different types of engagements in learning?

Web 2.0 technologies have allowed for us to utilize folksonomy to tag items in a bottom up approach. It allows for many new connections to be formed and from a layman’s point of view. Is it possible that we are reorganizing the way we think about things because we now simply have the power in which to do so? Many of the preexisting classification systems were put in place by a specific group of people so it made sense to work from the top down. Opening up the classification systems to everyone allows for individuals to classify things in a way which makes the most sense to them. The average person would start to identify something by what it is, not from the most general term it could be. If we were going to identify “A” typically, we could call it an “A”, not a letter, or alphabet, or symbol. This way of identifying things seems to be the most logical way in which to do so. These classification systems also allow for a larger scope of collaborative learning to take place. People are able to more easily identify with others who share similar interests. These new web 2.0 technologies allow accessibility to everyone. One no longer needs to be in a position of authority in order to participate and work in a collaborative learning space.

Web 2.0 technologies have allowed for learning to move from the individual to the collaborative. Web 2.0 technologies allow for the connectedness of ideas to become more intertwined. It will be interesting to see the next step of the collaborative learning process as technology evolves.

Week 10: Digital Literacy Across the Curriculum

George Gadanidis was a wonderful guest speaker and brought a wealth of knowledge to our discussions about digital literacy and the arts. I was really fascinated to learn of the Math Performance Festival http://www.edu.uwo.ca/mpc/festival.html. It sounds like an excellent way to get students engaged in learning math and to be actively involved in their own learning. An activity like this would provide students that struggle with math, but are successful in the arts, a new way in which to engage with mathematics. Many of the arts are closely connected to math and many arts students have strong math skills, but they do not necessarily utilize them in the ways that a person that is strong in mathematics would. Music is math but that does not necessarily mean that a musician will be successful in math. Utilizing the arts in the design of curriculum can allow access to students whose strengths lie within a different subject area. The arts provide a place where all students can engage regardless of their abilities in math; they are an access point of entry. Allowing students to create this type of work in a group encourages collaborative learning. It was great to see that some celebrities are help to encourage and promote this type of learning. It may help to encourage more students to get involved with this type of work.

I really enjoyed the activity found at www.brainyday.ca/fairytales/bigbadwolf.html because of the interactive tools provided. This website would be a great way to explore mathematical concepts while at home using manipulatives. This could help teachers provide students with the materials they need to be successful in math, without having to loan out all of the manipulatives in a classroom. Students could then show their parents what they learned in school that day, which can help to reinforce their own learning. Essentially the students are provided with a way to bring the classroom home to their parents. I hope that as computers become more accessible to all students that more programs are offered with this type of interaction.

Coming from a very strong background in dance, it was great to see that some students have been provided the opportunity to use dance within education. However, I was slightly disappointed to not see any males in this video http://www.edu.uwo.ca/mpc/mpf2010/mpf2010-101.html. Perhaps this video was taken at an all girls school which would explain the lack of males. Hopefully all educators are able to engage both males and females in this type of activity because both sexes can benefit from this form of self expression. Dancing provides an excellent opportunity for students that are stronger in the body/kineasthetic intelligence.

Song writing is one of the oldest traditions in music. Assuming that an individual can talk, they have access to singing. The process of song writing forces individuals to think about the topic they are writing about and it also develops many literacy skills. Once a song is created, repetition is needed to learn it. Through this repetition, students learn and memorize concepts that they may have previously struggled to grasp. If it is possible to add in gestures after the music has been written then another level of engagement is possible and again you are able to access another one of the multiple intelligences.

After seeing the benefits of engagement with the arts in education, how can we get more educators on board with allowing and encouraging arts engagement and performative measures to become part of their standard practice? I think it would be great to provide schools with a Math-Art Day at school where the entire student body gathers to share their performative mathematical pieces. It would be a fantastic way to celebrate learning, promote community and engage all learners.

Week 9: Gaming and Literacy-Chapter 5 in A New Literacies Sampler

Video games are typically not regarded as an educational tool. Recent research has started to challenge these traditional notions of gaming as 'bad' and have started to see gaming as an important agent in learning. Too often, the negative aspects of gaming become the focus of conversation and often individuals are thought to be 'wasting their lives' playing these types of games. Research that Gee and others have completed has started to concentrate on the benefits that gaming can have on learning. Gee begins to decode gaming and simplify what happens when people participate in gaming.

One statement that Gee makes in this chapter that captivated my interest and it was the notion of a surrogate in gaming; ''In a video game the real-world player gains a surrogate, that is, the virtual character the player is playing. By "inhabit" I mean that you, the player, act in the game as if the goals of your surrogate are your goals." Reading this statement made me think about the role I had while playing video games and how it has evolved as video games have matured. My gaming experiences began with playing Super Mario World. I was forced to be a man and my overall goal was to save the princess. I guess I was not really represented in this game but I still found it fun to play. Maybe part of me thought that I was the princess so I had to get someone to save me. I am not completely sure where my head was at that time but I knew I enjoyed playing games. More recently we have seen video games that incorporate the choice of characters. I am excited to see that game players now have options available in their character selection such as sex, hair colour, skin colour etc. This helps making gaming more appealing for a larger group of people. The surrogate that a player selects can now better represent them as a person. It helps make gaming more equitable for everyone. I have frequently found myself paying much detail to the persona of the characters I use when I play Rockband. I try to recreate myself in my character, or maybe more specifically a ‘better’ version of myself. By creating your own character you can manipulate their looks to suit your own taste. A form of self expression and self exploration happens when creating these characters. In the past I have tended to create characters that tend to be thinner than myself. Maybe I am trying to recreate the past but I am definitely trying to create a better surrogate of myself.
Creating a surrogate of oneself allows for a player to explore scenarios that may not happen in real life and are sometimes completely fantastical. These unreal worlds allow people to live in surreal moments. Gee discusses Thief: Deadly Shadows and how players take on the roles of the characters that they are playing. Players receive superpowers and are on a mission to complete certain tasks. Realistically, most people are never going to be able to do the things that the character in this game does, but individuals can live vicariously through game play. Video game playing in many ways mimics the idea of imaginary play that society seems to force us to lose as we get older.

Video game playing often forms communities with other game players, especially with the emergence of online game play. Players are able to communicate with one another in new ways like via a headset, and players are able to form communities based on their interest in gaming. Gaming helps develop many critical literacy skills through play such as prediction, reading, inferring etc. These online communities that form also promote discussion and can often lead to players seeking out additional information on the games they play. Many forums online exist to help players find secrets in their gaming or simply talk about different games. All of these sites help individuals practice and gain more literacy skills. Traditionally, players were able to buy gaming magazines that included these stories, secrets and hints of game play but these online forums provide a more interactive means to players to discuss their game and develop their literacy skills.

The overall larger question that I am left with after reading this is how can we implement the successful aspects of gaming into educational gaming? Commercial gaming has been incredibly successful but educational gaming lacks the flair that is so prevalent in commercial gaming. Gee has introduced us to some of the benefits that game playing has and it could be such a powerful tool to use in our classroom. How do we convince administration of these benefits and how can we implement it into our own teaching practices? I think that efforts should be spent to create a game, using the successful elements of design found in commercial gaming, to create educational games based on curriculum expectations of each grade level. If this type of game could be create and engage our students, it would provide them with opportunities to be practicing the skills that they learned during the day when they go home. It could create communities in the classroom and encourage students to participate in collaborative learning processes. It would be a successful tool in practicing the skills learned during a traditional school day. If this type of gaming were available to students from home, the question of access and equity arises. How can we ensure that all students have an equal opportunity to participate, especially if they do not have a computer or internet access? There are a lot of factors that need to be considered to implement this type of game and the benefits of student engagement and learning opportunities would be plentiful. Hopefully in the future we can see a system like this implemented to further our students’ learning opportunities.
http://www.soe.jcu.edu.au/sampler/

Week 8:Children Writing: Multimodality and Assessment in the writing classroom by:John Vincent

Vincent examines a very critical problem in our curriculum which is the lack of an assessment models for multimodal work. He uses a case study from his own classroom to demonstrate the importance of providing students with the chance to work multimodally. Through the work of Student B, we are able to see how a student that is typically not successful becomes engaged and creates a very well thought-out multimodal piece. Vincent looks towards other assessment models to mark this type of work and shows us that such models are non-existent or are not fully prepared to assess these types of texts.

Vincent leaves you with the impression that there is little to no multimodality work going on in our schools because of the lack of assessment tools that exist. He could have strengthened his piece by providing some examples where multimodal work is happening in the schools. Vincent also limits his study to one individual in his own classroom. It would have been beneficial to examine the work of other students in his school or from other classrooms. He then could have talked and incorporate other teachers and students opinions of working multimodally and for teachers, how they assess this type of work. Although Vincent examines Student B’s work in detail, he provides on example of Student A’s work and there is no further information about it. His paper could have been strengthened to include a follow through examination of Student A’s multimodal piece.

Overall, this research is somewhat limiting as it is a case study, it still raises awareness on the important fact that more assessment tools are need for multimodal pieces before this type of work starts to be the normal practice in all classrooms. It also needs to become part of our standard curriculums so that we can provide students with multiple opportunities to work in these multimodal settings as it is more true to the world that exists beyond the four walls of our classrooms. Hopefully, raising awareness can help activate the changes that are needed in this crucial subject area.

Overall, I feel that my seminar went well. Having the opportunity to be able to discuss assessment with other peers was helpful since everyone comes from a different wealth of experience. I am hoping that this seminar starts to generate some thought into how to assess multimodal work. The Ning will provide a great opportunity for those that do have some experience in assessing this type of work to be able to share with others. It would be very useful to look at assessment in multimodal work in a collaborative way since it is something that still needs much work done on it. Hopefully, through experience, more schemas will be developed in order to assess this type of work which should help inspire more teachers to utilize this type of work in their classrooms.

Vincent J. (2006). Children Writing: Multimodality and Assessment in the Writing Classroom. Literacy, 40(1), 51-57.

Week 7: Engaging Students Through New Literacies: The Good, Bad and Curriculum of Visual Essays by Janette Hughes & Sarah Tolley

Our educational system is deeply rooted within assessment and tied to this is the idea of essay writing. Essay writing in the traditional sense, is an important skill to have, but it is by no means, the only way in which the important ideas of an essay can be extracted and clearly identified to others. These traditional texts were more applicable before technology became such a fundamental part of how meaning is conveyed. Today, individuals need to have a deeper understanding of how all of these new types of texts integrate with one another to convey meanings.

Hughes and Tolley argue that we need to "help our students understand and experience how literature brings them to a deeper understanding in life, we need to find meaningful ways to engage them with it, ways that are also part of their new media world." I fully agree with this idea but I struggle on how to do this. The resources that schools have can be so limiting and doing some of this type of work requires certain tools in order to have it work successfully. Can the same learning be achieved in a classroom when these resources are limited? Does simply talking to students about these new medias actually engage them so that they are able to take something away from these discussions? Perhaps I question this because my educational philosopies are deeply rooted within experiential based learning.

Implementing visual essays in our curriculum seems like a very promising activity in allowing students alternative ways to demonstrate their understanding of a given topic. Some students struggle with their own 'voice' when it comes to committing ideas to paper, but excel when asked to voice their opinions in a verbal manner. A visual essay can provide these types of students with the perfect opportunity to explore these new ways of producing meaning.

Hughes and Tolley mention that they wished they had called these projects 'redesigned demonstrations of literacy' instead of visual essays, as the students had beyond creating something that was just visual. I question that if it were to be called something else, would it make a significant difference or not?

My hope after reading this article and reflecting upon the use of visual essays in the classroom, is that more teachers start to make activities like this part of their regular practice. Too often, we are consumed by the idea of assessment and covering everything in the curriculum. Yes, getting heavily involved in these concepts is important, but it is also important to engage the students in our classrooms who are not necessarily engaged using traditional texts. I have had first hand experience using multimodal texts in my practicum placement and I found that the students who usually did not do well, or even hand in work, were the most enthusiastic when provided an opportunity to work in this way. Why not allow students to engage in literacies that they enjoy?

Coming from a musical background, I am very fascinated to learn of the different musical choices that students make when working multimodally. When using music with lyrics, many times it is easy to see if students made a good choice or not with respect to their choice. My musical background allows me to assess if students had made good musical choices if they were to select music without lyrics. I am interested in knowing if teachers that come from little to no musical background find it hard to make this connection. Are they comfortable assessing a choice like this? Is it really fair that they can assess something like this if they do not necessarily have the skills to understand it, particularly if a student were to write a piece of music themselves to incorporate into a multimodal text. This is a very debatable topic and it would be interesting to hear people's perspectives on it.

As educators, we are going to have to continue to challenge our own thoughts on what it means to be literate. We must begin to incorporate or continue to add these new literacies to our own teaching practices so that the material we teach becomes more applicable to the world in which our students are living in. As technology evolves our teaching practices must shift with it.

Huges, J & Tolley, S. (2010). Engaging Students Through New Literacies: The Good, Bad and Curriculum of Visual Essays. English Education, 44(1).