I'll begin by echoing everyone else in saying that talking these issues out with everyone else has been extremely helpful to me. I still don't like the phrasing of my research question and I think I can do a better job of explaining the connection between the two ideas in my question, but I feel much, much better about my actual project. I feel like I have a much better grasp of where to start with my literature review, which is a huge relief for me because that's seemed like a fairly daunting task because I could see so many different ways to go with both the project and the research and now I feel like it's a more manageable project.

Problem:
I feel that my students lack critical thinking skills, specifically that they take texts at face value when they are presented to them and that they fail to understand or differentiate value between different historical records and texts. I want to see if having student's go through the process of creating a historical record of their own will change the way they approach other texts. It's interesting, while looking up an article for my paper for Sharon's class I came across an editorial in the New York Times about the Texas State Board of Education revising their Social Studies Core Curriculum. The editorial argues that student's "... deserve to have a curriculum chosen for its educational value, not politics or ideology." I agree with the sentiment of the article but I think the fact that it exists highlights the fact that other teachers also recognize that student's do not critically engage with the texts they encounter in the classroom. The editorial makes the assumption that student's will accept what is presented in their textbooks as history rather than as a version of history.

Research statement:
The purpose of this study is to document high school student’s abilities to critically analyze historical texts while participating in the creation of an oral history project.

Data Collection:
* Student projects
* lesson plans/student handouts
* roundtable interview and observations from student's--I think I'd like to do a pre and post interview and ask student's how they view texts etc, before the project and then ask them the same questions again at the end and see if they perceive any difference in how they interact with historical texts.

Media Response 5

This movie's been sitting in my netflix queue for a couple of months now but I finally got around to watching it this weekend and I'm so glad I finally found the time to watch because it was great. Netflix labeled it a mockumentary and I suppose in the sense that it is not actually real it is "mock"-umentary but I tend to associate that term with Christopher Guest style over the top antics and while there were a few moments that approached that in this film, as a general rule the film felt extremely real to me. I've definitely had those freak out moments in the classroom, I've said things that 2 seconds later I wished I could take back. I've struggled to get kids to care about subjects that they seem to see as having little to no value in their lives. Most of the teachers in the film clearly cared about being good teachers and it was nice to see a movie in which most of the teachers seemed competent instead of making it all about the lone teacher who actually cares about her students amidst a see of indifference that seems to make up the plot of most Hollywood films about teaching.

Watching the film got me thinking about what draws us into a movie and causes us to identify with the characters. In this film I identified with the characters because they seemed to reflect some of my own experiences and emotions, but does that mean that the film won't appeal to anyone who hasn't taught in a high school? Clearly not, because I've also found myself moved to tears by situations and characters that bear no resemblance to my actual life. I don't really think I have any conclusions here, but I do think it's interesting how some stories capture us because they seem to embody some of our own experiences while others can be completely outside of our realm and yet also hold great appeal and empathy for us as an audience.

So after reading through his comments in the roundtable discussion, does anyone else feel like Marc Prensky and Eisenstein would get along? At least in the sense that they both seem to be pretty firmly convinced of the superiority of their own approach to anything.

I actually found Mr. Prensky's critique of the format of the program really interesting, particularly in light of some of the criticisms raised about the possible detrimental effects of the digital lifestyle. I was really interested in the idea that multitasking has changed the way students write, that they struggle with writing papers that contain a connecting thread, instead they bounce from idea to idea in each paragraph. Mr. Prensky criticized the program for not laying out their arguments in a sort of issue, pro/con and then new issue format. To me, that seems like a much more old school way of organizing an argument, conversely the more loose organizational style the documentary actually used seems to be more in line with the way multitaskers think, jumping from idea to idea and then back and assuming that everyone is following the logical leaps. Of course, I suppose you could also argue that by breaking the issues up into smaller chunks of pro positions, con positions and then you move on you are also creating something that is more in line with the attention span of the multitasking generation. I also found it interesting because it breaks what is clearly a complex issue into a binary of positive and negative. I think that goes against everything we've discussed about multiliteracy and media literacy and the value that it has for students.

Over the course of the last year, I've become increasingly convinced that media and technology and the behaviors that accompany the use of them are neither bad nor good, it merely is. It is our responsibility as educators to find ways to use it in positive ways and to help students to become aware of the ways they interact with media. We should educate them so that they can make informed decisions about their media choices. This fits rather conveniently into our discussion of the necessary elements of multiliteracy education. We must provide students with opportunities to practice and transform knowledge but we need to make sure we are giving them the critical framing and overt instruction, without all four elements the strategy is much weaker.

Media Response 4

So, this week we began our marathon training program. Last year, I read 4 Months to a 4 Hour Marathon and we used it as our training guide to prepare for the Ogden Marathon. This year, inspired by listening to the audiobook version of Born to Run, we decided to choose an off road marathon for our big goal. We plan on running in the Timp Trail Marathon. Anticipating that this might be a little more difficult than our previous marathon, I started looking for a training program that was also a little more intense. After reading several reviews of training books on Amazon, we decided to use the FIRST training program. In addition to doing three weekly running workouts, one speed, one tempo, and one long run, I decided to add some core strength training on my own.

Once again I returned to amazon, this time in search of a fitness dvd that I could do to work on improving my core strength. After reading a bunch of different user reviews I opted to buy Jillian Michael's 30 Day Shred. I've never actually seen the Biggest Loser but through pop culture osmosis I've managed to pick up the premise of the show and a little bit about the trainers and I felt like the dvd would be a good fit for me. The dvd arrived yesterday and this morning I got up and completed the first training circuit. My arms are really tired, but I feel good about the workout and I think it's going to help me to be a stronger runner.

What does this all have to do with media literacy and our ongoing discussions? As I was getting ready for work this morning I was pondering all of the various media elements that have gone into my marathon training decisions. I've read a variety of written texts both online and off, I've listened to books about training, I've relied on the expert opinions of strangers via blogs and product reviews, all to prepare myself to do one of the most basic of human activities--running. I don't know that I have anything super profound or original to say about the topic but I do think it's really interesting to look at just how much the way I interact with media has impacted just one small area of my life.

Media Response 3

Friday was our last day at Sundance and it featured the only narrative film we watched all week. Bilal's Stand, was a great coming of age story about an African-American teenager growing up in Detroit and his struggle to decide between going to college or staying in Detroit to help his family. I really liked the film for several reasons.

One, I liked that it was an honest story that felt realistic and authentic to the community while still being a film I could comfortably watch with my students. I'm not opposed to realism in language or sexuality but it's nice to see a film that doesn't rely on cheap exploitation for emotional resonance. Two, I think the story itself was very relevant to the particular student population that I work with. I've had many students who struggle between balancing school and taking care of their own interests while still helping out their families through working, tending younger children, etc. Three, I loved the fact that at the end of the film we learned that the story was very autobiographical and that in fact many of the actors in the film were playing themselves and that the director had studied film in college and then went on to start a non-profit organization that works to teach inner city kids about film making and that Bilal's Stand was their first completed film. I've seen how proud my students are after completing a 3-5 minute documentary film. They're so excited for the opportunity to show the movie to their peers and family on a big screen, I can't imagine how much that excitement would be amplified if the project they had worked together to create had been accepted into the Sundance Film Festival.

Just to throw some theory in here, I will also say that I really admired the project because I think it was a perfect mixture of situated practice, overt instruction, critical framing, and transforming knowledge.

On a more frivolous note, I find Lady Gaga's fans fascinating. Do you think this qualifies as a low-tech way to transform information?

Since I will also be presenting this week, I'm going to follow in Timbre's footsteps and just discuss the Multiliteracies article here. So Gee is a member of the New London Group, yes? I was pleased to see the return of his Student's Bill of Rights in this week's reading, particularly as they expanded on what each of those ideas meant and I found my understanding of each principle being strengthened. That said, I will admit that while I'm beginning to get a handle on the how of literacy pedagogy, I find myself still very confused about the discussion of the what of literacy pedagogy.

If my understanding of what they presented as the Designs of Meaning is correct, they see Available Designs as the information that is already present, Designing as the process of using that information in the learning process and then the Redesigned as the transformed information. Is it just me or does that not sound like the how only in different language? Available Designs are the Critical Framing and Overt Instruction of the available knowledge/systems, Situated Practice is the Designing stage and Transforming knowledge is the last stage. Am I just oversimplifying here or missing something obvious? I suppose part of the explanation may be that they are saying look here is what multiliteracy pedagogy should look like and then this is how that looks in practice, but it all just seems needlessly complicated to me. I know Amy said we should be looking at not just the content of these articles but also how they are written and I'm stating that I found these the separation of the what and the how with different language to describe the same concepts kind of confusing.

Another aspect of the article that I found somewhat confusing was the introduction which talked about society's increasing privatization and the idea that "...market directed theories and practices , even though they sound humane, will never authentically include a vision of success and for all students." Only to go on and talk about how school's can redesign pedagogy to incorporate multiplicity and diversity and greater success for all students. It's not that I don't agree with their vision of what school's should do, I just don't understand how they got from their first conclusion into the rest of the article. Maybe I'm getting tied up in the practicalities when they're just talking about the theoretical and what should be and not what is, but I don't understand how we go from society has been steadily moving in this direction that favors students with access to schools can change the pedagogy of how we think of literacy so that every student has both access and engagement. I don't mean to be overly negative here because I know that just criticizing the system does nothing and that I'm hopefully playing a (small) part in actually making this vision of multimodal students a reality but it through me for a loop when they seemed to be going down the critical path only to suddenly jump in what to me feels like the opposite direction.

Sorry, I feel like I'm kind of all over the place with the article this week but hopefully you can make some sense of my rambling and I'm going to stop now.

Today was our first day at Sundance and I was pleased that both of the documentaries we saw were going to be great discussion material later on in the classroom.

First up we saw A Small Act.

A SMALL ACT documentary trailer from Patti Lee on Vimeo.

I really liked the movie and thought it did a great job of showing how generational poverty and lack of education contributes to the other problems in developing parts of the world. I think it will be a great jumping off point for classroom discussion about privilege and access to resources. After the movie the director talked about how she became familiar with the story because she spent some time in Kenya in college and became good friends with one of the women involved in starting the scholarship fund. Last week the Hands on a Camera students talked to the kids about finding a good story and about looking around at the people in the various communities they are part of to find a story to tell and I thought this was such a great example of that idea.

The second documentary we saw was Space Tourists.

Again, the movie itself had a lot of content that could be interesting for classroom discussions about history--particularly the role of the space race on the cold war-- as well discussions about technologies environmental impacts and the cost/benefit analysis of pursuing space travel on a large scale, but I think the most interesting stuff came from the director's q&a. He talked about a part of the film that shows scavengers who go out and collect the rocket boosters and salvage them for scrap metals and the difficulty they had in obtaining permission from the Russian government to film these scavengers. He said the government wanted them to film a staged scavenging with government employees in the roles, he was disgusted by the idea and talked about how it would have ruined the film. I thought this was very interesting information because it highlights how much we as the audience rely on the director to be truthful. If the film says documentary then we expect to see actual events not staged re-enactments, but why is that? I hope this incident will lead to an interesting discussion about the need for critical thinking when viewing media and help facilitate student's understanding of how texts are impacted by who creates them and for what purposes they are created.

So, this week's reading had a lot of big ideas and challenging material for me and I look forward to talking some of them out this week in class. In the meantime, I felt particularly inspired by the Seiter and Heverly articles. Both of these articles had sections that felt like they were speaking directly to me and addressing my experiences in the classroom.

Seiter's pessimistic look at the use of technology as a cure all hit very close to home for me and in reading her descriptions of the two students at High Tech High I couldn't help but feel that I was reading a description of some of my own students. As you all know my classroom is designed to be a cooperative learning environment in which learning is project based and in which student's are given access to a laptop that they get to take home and use to further facilitate their education. On good days I feel like we are engaged in granting students situational practice and opportunities on bad days I worry that we are failing students in the basic skills and that we are not providing them with any great technological skills in exchange. I know that I have students who use their laptops almost exclusively for gaming and although some of those students also make use of the other creative software programs on their laptops, I've noticed that these also tend to be the students who fall behind in the actual schoolwork portion of our class. Of course I recognize that my program is slightly different in that there is a high possibility that students who are in my class would not be going to school at all or participating at much lower levels if they weren't in my class but I still worry that in our efforts to expand technology to our students we may actually be causing more harm than good.

Heverly's article about the dangers of digital media in particular the persistent nature of digital media is also resonating strongly for me this week because again I know that we are providing students with the tools to create media artifacts without giving them a proper understanding of the potential dangers or long term consequences of creating and sharing these digital texts. Last week I was going over a computer that a student had turned in and I found a huge collection of pictures of the student drinking, smoking, etc. The student is no longer enrolled at our school so I just deleted the content but I couldn't help but think about the fact that this student saw no problem with taking such pictures with his school issued laptop, that's problematic to say the least. Heverly talks about students not necessarily understanding the consequences when they get involved with the creation of these types of digital media and I think that's true to some extent but I also think there is some element of uncaring that may be somewhat incomprehensible to those of us who came of age in the analog era. I frequently get the impression that my kids have an attitude that bad things may get posted online and that it's just something that everyone does and goes through and that it's not a big deal. In contrast I found that an old friend had converted some old video footage to digital and posted it to Facebook and was completely mortified at the idea that people would be watching my sixteen year old self saying ridiculous things about the boy I had a crush on. I don't really have any conclusions but I do feel like I need to have another conversation with my students about what content is appropriate to have on their school computers though.

Blame it on the pop

I was already pretty sure I was going to write about this song for my first media response entry and then I did this week's reading on multimodalities and it seemed like a perfect fit. I've been a big fan of mash up music for a while now, there's something really appealing to me about an artist who can take bits and pieces of other songs and fit them together to create something totally new. For the last few years DJ Earworm has done these mashups of the top 25 songs of the year according to Billboard magazine. This year's is definitely my favorite one. I downloaded the track back in December and it's been on my running playlist ever since but it wasn't until I sat down to write this blog that I looked up the video for the song and I was amazed at how much easier it was for me to pick out the samples from the various songs when I could connect them to the visual images. Now that I've watched the video a couple of times I can pick out the the little bits just listening but it amazes me to think of all the little snippets I had previously missed even though I've listened to the song dozens of times before this. I'm not sure if that's what Kress meant by multimodalities but it definitely seemed to illustrate the idea to me.

I'm not sure how I would use something like this in my classroom, but I do think it would be an interesting way to introduce the concept of intertextuality. It might also be interesting way to talk about plagiarism and crediting your sources. I would be interested in hearing if my students felt something like this was more comparable to copying a quote word for word in a paper or paraphrasing something to make it their own. I think I would lean towards the latter explanation myself but I think it could spark some interesting discussion.

I was extremely interested in Gee's idea of portfolio people, specifically the idea that to be successful in today's job market it is more important to have a variety of diverse experiences than to be very knowledgeable in a narrow field. I found myself identifying with this outlook, particularly as I look back on my own work experiences, where there have been some common elements but where my overall experiences have been much more diverse.

In looking for links between this week's articles, I found myself considering the two MIT articles within the framework of the pedagogies of the Gee piece. Particularly the portion of the Gee article that laid out his Bill of Rights for all children: The right to lots of situated practice, the right to overt instruction, the right to critical framing, and the right to be allowed to produce and transform knowledge not just consume it.

I was interested in the way the Boyd article fit within the right to lots of situated practice. She talked about the difference between the way teens who have internet access at home and those who can only access it in public locations like school or a library participate on myspace. The teens with limited mainly public access still used the site but there experience was much more narrow than those with home access who could spend more time working on their profiles and using the other features of the site to a greater extent. This seemed to be a real world example of situated practice and how it is limited or denied to those from disadvantaged socioeconomic backgrounds. It also seemed to be an example of how those with access have more chances to produce and transform knowledge, while those with less access are again forced into the more marginalized role of consumers. I also felt that Boyd's discussion of the the creation of a copy/paste culture was a fantastic example of Gee's explanation of the difference between learning and knowledge building. It is unimportant if a teen understands html code as long as he/she knows how to find someone else who does they will still be able to create an awesome profile page.

In the Goldman and Booker article I found myself looking at the case studies as examples of situated practice, overt instruction, critical framing, and the opportunity to create and transform knowledge. The film project in particular served as a beautiful example of how all four of those learning objectives could be implemented in a single classroom experience. I also thought the film project was an excellent example of a community of practice and found myself thinking about Gee's statement that in a community of practice they bond through a common endeavor and not affective ties because it seemed clear from the descriptions of the project that the teens had indeed bonded more of their shared participation in the project first and then through the project they developed affective ties.