*Includes a narrative context
about where this project came from, what you did, and why it is important to
you.
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Where it came from
The senior English curriculum
at my school is nebulously established and inconsistent across classrooms.
Perhaps much of my impression has to do with diminished department
contact due to my room being in a separate wing, but the disconnect it creates is a feeling I've learned to trust.
However true this may be, (or seem) as an education model, it neither
befits learning in 2012, nor my personal preference. It's even anathema to the curriculum itself, as the year is
anchored by a theme of social justice - a philosophy that combats the modernist
notion that the community exists only to support the desires of the individual.
Said another way, the teachers who
are teaching about meaningful, non-hegemonic human relationships are doing so
in ultramodern isolation. If it wasn't for the students spreading the
word about what's happening, it'd all be academic radio silence.
What I did
Objectively speaking,
this is an unacceptable way to teach, and our department has embraced it
mightily. My response was to create
a website for the ease of planning it will afford me, the ease of access it
will afford students and families, and because it is a public space that can
lead to better dialogue among teachers about our methods. I consider
myself fortunate ("How great is that?" Dr. Patterson had
pointed out) to have the autonomy to do what I do, and I know the other senior
teachers feel similarly. But classroom
autonomy can also give rise to militant territorial-ness – a quality that looks
good on no one and doesn’t expand community beyond the classroom.
Why it is important
As a person who is drawn
naturally to teams and to the belief that I
exist at my best when I exist with others, I am seeking always to be part
of one. My primary goal with each class
each year is to create a team and captain them through, and I have been most
successful when I’ve done it. Creating the website was important to me
because I want my classes to have a place that they can access anywhere, at any
time, and on any device that will help create and amplify that team feeling. I also want to create a space that comes
closer to moving at the speed of a Digital Native. Dr. Marc Prensky’s radical idea that the brains and
thought modes of Natives are fundamentally different from my own is both
fascinating and a major challenge to me.
Like many educators, I struggle with knowing whether the technology I use
is only enabling me to teach what I have always taught with more digital flash,
or allowing me to communicate wholly new ideas.
I am grateful for the struggle, however, as I know it will keep the
question uppermost in my planning.
Seeing the Wesch-moderated "A Vision of Students Today" in conjunction with Sir Ken Robinson’s talk helped to concretize their collective thesis: that the methods employed by U.S. teachers are
stultifyingly arcane and must be adapted for the contemporary digital
environment. Wesch spotlights part
of that piece in his 2010 TEDx talk wherein he uses the arrival of new media
(census books and maps) in a New Guinea village to show how media literally changed the landscape, the
history of the people, and how they relate to each other. He then makes the point, of course, that the
arrival of new media to the digital world has precisely the same effect on
Internet denizens. The parallels are
clear and teachers remain mired in the
past at their own peril. The village
children are born into and grow up in numbered, ordered houses that bear
resemblance in shape only to those of their elders. Teaching the obsolescing literacies of the
past to our students is tantamount to the village elders neglecting to teach
their children how to get from house to house by looking at the addresses. All of
this is to say that I want the site to be a place that teaches and uses
contemporary literacies.
Of course, it is also important to me that this
site will lead to an easier and more open dialogue between the teachers. It’s a
way to engage in conversation about our department goals without using time at
the department meetings. It’s my hope
that mine can be a small step towards consolidating resources, workshopping
ideas, and refining the course, all while maintaining each teacher’s
instructional affordances.
*Explains how the use of digital technology
enhances or changes this content/context.
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Because it tends to be unwieldy and abstract, teaching about the global availability of
food and water can be difficult. How I
hope digital technology can help reshape the context for the students is by immediately connecting them, the
outcome of our class discussions, and their experiences with others across the world.
I know the food and water unit (meal journal, 10,000 grains, rice
visualization, taste test, examination of municipal vs. multinational quality
documentation, Tapped, analysis of
their own water habits, etc.) can benefit greatly from being taught and
understood in a hyper-real digital context, and not just by embedding the
information in the site. I am eager to test the capability of the
Internet to convey information that I have not yet been able to and have not
yet even considered. I think that an
infographic of their food consumption versus that of someone living in poverty,
with information supplied and manipulated by the students, will make a stronger
point than I could. Understanding
character motivation, ambition, and the implications of knowing something one
can’t un-know in Macbeth will be made
more salient through attending Skype rehearsals for a professional
production. If I’m honest with myself, I
know that I don’t yet know all the ways in which I’ll be able to make more
content more available through use of digital technology. I am looking
forward to exploring, though.
During the week, I was
primarily inspired by the spirit and
work of Drs. Wesch, Fortuna, and Patterson, as well as that of my classmates. By
the course’s end, I knew that I had learned at least one new instructional
technology from each of the other 7 that I am excited to use in
class. Among others, Jing, Voicethread, Infographics, safercar.org,
QR generator, Google’s url shortener, and especially Weebly will figure
prominently into my pedagogy in the coming year.
As I said, Dr. Prensky’s
concept of Digital Natives is both a curio and a challenge to me. His claim implies that, as a Digital
Immigrant, I am and will forever be playing
catch-up with new technology and those whose proficiency with it
shapes the world in which I teach. I do
have an advantage as an immigrant,
however, and it’s the same as that which many immigrants of all kinds have – a
critical eye for that which the Natives accept as normal, natural, and good. Clicking through the Media Education Foundation’s website quickly and powerfully reminded me that my students don’t know how to scrutinize the media
that is both (mis)representing and commodifying them because they don’t know that it’s happening – they’re too close to
it. As an outsider, as it were, I can
recognize it for what it is and help them to become literate in their own
constructed image. The films on the
website, particularly the Killing us
Softly series are resources I will use in class. This week confirmed for me that the media,
which I’m beginning to understand as that
which reflects an image of people back to themselves, has perhaps the
largest role in determining what counts as normal, natural, and good in a
culture. And, like we saw in the Rucker
Park film, it matters very little
whether the reflection is accurate, because it will inevitably become the truth. If “ideal” and “ideology” are linked by the
media, then it is critically important to educate students on how to view the
reflection critically. To do so is to
supply them with the literacies necessary to understand their position and be
able to speak cogently about it. There are no answers - no way to
extract Photoshop from the image industry - but there discussions to be had in light of that reality and
others. And it is, I suppose, the
Natives who will have them, facilitated as they will undoubtedly be by new
digital media that
has not yet even been imagined.
All of this will take dedication and genius, please let Ms. Gilbert explain how not to let the pressure get to us. (My favorite part starts around 15:35...).
All of this will take dedication and genius, please let Ms. Gilbert explain how not to let the pressure get to us. (My favorite part starts around 15:35...).
