Digital Text: Not Just For School

Chapter 1, the opening picture of Part A, a multi-level mall epitomizes the links and cross links of multi-modal literacy! I spent a great deal of time processing the constructs centered around social interactions and the role they play for students and adults, particularly as it relates to digital media literacy. Since we just completed the "Deconstructing Digital Natives" many of the salient points still resonate and are relevant in this new book, which keeps circling back to the differences between Natives and Immigrants. On one hand, social media plays a significant role in the daily life of many teens (Natives), but in some cases that significant role has soared into a dominant role for some adults (Immigrants). This all leads me back to importance of social interactions and the role they play in learning. Gee offers evidence to support his claims about learning from video games, yet it's not the "what" so much as the "how." Trial and error can be an effective way to learn a new concept, especially if there is more experienced learner there to scaffold, only when the dynamic struggle leads to frustration that would cause a learner to quit rather than persevere. This leads to my quote of the chapter, "Arguing that game players are developing different approaches to learning"(Willett, pg 14). The learn by doing or low risk practice is a concept that a lot of people wanting to support, but feel constrained by mandates and timelines, which then turns into..."we don't have time for that" or "that's not really learning what you need to know to be successful" which led me to this visual.

Chapter 2, the quote I chose really is a continuation of all the discussion about multi-modal communication that I have been involved in for quite some time. Julia Davies offers this thought..."All communication is multi-modal (Norris, 2004), so it is not surprising that play in one mode often triggers play in others; thus play with images, for example, often provokes playful, creative language. (Davies, pg 32-33) Furthermore, the quote builds upon many other points of view about learning in general, for example if people are just "hanging out" with no expectation of learning something new or how to better access where they are "hanging" does learning occur? By digging deeper on this question you might be inclined to ask for a specific definition of learning as it applies to this situation and I would be inclined to agree, but also add that any interaction regardless of the motive yields understanding not previously obtained. Since the quote opens the door to play I was immediately remembering some of Mead's thoughts on the idea of self, which led me to offer this video as way to broaden the conversation as it relates to students learning how to learn and think about their interactions with different types of texts. As well as what they and others around them learn to value. Reading this chapter I was still recalling the case studies of Shaun and Caitlyn, which caused me to ponder this question... How do they make sense of the "Me" and "I" as it relates to digital literacy?




Chapter 3 gives way to more case studies that really get the reader to start thinking about their own possible students as well as classroom practices. The first glaring point is the required hand writing vs typing (I agree that students need to learn how to write by hand and even further agree that the very act of writing letters make a cognitive difference in the decoding and encoding skills of students), but the lame excuses offered are well just that lame! My students must write a timed essay, either informative or persuasive, as part of the writing exam required for their English credit. Since this essay must be typed all the practice work they do in my classes is electronic and turned in via email as an attachment that I grade or gets peer graded, No paper and they benefit from using more 21st Century skills (Note: all peer grading in my class is anonymous, No student ever knows whose paper they are grading). The other points in the case studies point toward the social aspects and interactions as well as the motives for those interactions, which led to this quote..."In order to succeed socially, as well as, academically, across the myriad opportunities for text production available in the early twenty-first century, children must possess the ability to interrogate and recognize the power relations and forces that play upon and around their production." The term I would use is "authentic digital literacy" not just functional awareness of digital literacy tools.

Illuminated Text

More presentations from Raphael

References:
YouTube: Khan Academy: George Herbert Mead

Photosforclass.com

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