Barbara Guzetti is a professor at ASU. Her expertise is in new media and technologies, gender studies, popular culture media, and literacy. In regards to literacy she focuses on adolescents and technology literacy. She is also interested in DIY in education. I don't know if I found the correct Kate Elliott. The one I found is a science fiction and fantasy writer. She seems pretty well known. Diana Welsch works at the University of Texas in Women's studies. Other than that I couldn't find much on her.
This article reminds me of what I already have learned in my curriculum and instruction classes. We don't sit and talk about technology. Usually when we talk about a students funds of knowledge, which is the knowledge each child brings to the classroom, its usually in terms of their culture, race, or background. It makes sense that technology could easily be a fund of knowledge as well. Basically anything could be useful information. Students offer a lot to the classroom. Gauging their interests and deciding what to put in their syllabus is a huge job for a teacher; the things in the syllabus should be things that interest the students. Otherwise, they get absolutely nothing out of the learning.
Another reason teachers should learn DIY media is the fact that they need to stay up to date on what their students are interested in outside of school. That way they have things in common and can talk about academic things in those terms and in those contexts. It's all about the student.
Also, these students will need these technological skills later on in life. The world is moving towards that direction and in order to stay up to date schools and teachers need to keep up to date and teach their kids. Some students, especially urban minority students who don't have access to technology need to learn these skills.
The article also discusses how traditionally, "boys resist school literacies" (5). However, they engage "more often and on more sophisticated levels" than girls do in media literacies. This gap could be because of cyber-bulling; girls are more likely to be victims of this. It's good that they addressed this. It's an issue teachers are going to have to be dealing with now.
Also, after school programs focused on either girls only or boys only helps to make this gap smaller. However, I'm a little skeptical of if these programs really work. I did a research paper on girls only and boys only schools and classrooms and if they are more effective than co-ed classrooms and their is never really enough evidence to go either way. In the real world, boys and girls will have to work together. But at the same time, when kids are that young they are self-conscious and sometimes prefer working with children of the same sex.
DISCUSSION Q?'s:
The article describes teachers as "digital migrants", people who haven't grown up with the new literacies that their students have. What will change with this new generation of teachers that have grown up with all this technology?
In co-ed classrooms, how should teachers deal with the gender gap in regards to DIY media literacies?
Anderson/Balsamo
Balsamo is a professor at USC in the School of Cinematic Arts. Her work focuses on the relationship between culture and technology. I couldn't find the correct Steve Anderson, there were too many when I googled his name. I tried to associate him with MIT, but all I could find were Steve Anderson's that attended MIT.
This article was kind of weird for me. I want to be a teacher in a classroom, with students that don't sound like holographs. It just sounded like a made-up game to me. The other article gave, what I thought could potentially be really great advice for teachers. Maybe for a teacher who wants to do an entire class online, this would be great help, but it just didn't suit me as well. They talk about these games that the holographs play with different tools. They can switch up their tools between games if they wish. Also, things that are relevant to school now, like socioeconomic status are talked about, but again, not in the context that I'll see in a real classroom. Sure, technology and how much they have of it at home shows socioeconomic class sometimes, but financial ability to enroll in "reality-based" programs are considered the wealthy.
I do agree with the fact that as teachers, we need to view students as technological beings and from a different generation. In my case though, I grew up with lots of technology as well. Maybe not as much as the students I will have one day though.
The author discusses "Original Synners' which are people who "develop strong abilities to critically evaluate the veracity and reliability of information sources" (245).
"When this happens, the teachers will have as much to learn as students" (245). I do believe that this statement is also true. When their is a disposition in generations, teachers do need to learn a lof of what their students are doing. Their outside learning and how they do it is vital in the classroom like I said above.
Open, Hybrid, and Media Rich sites are discussed (definitions on pg 247). This connected back to the DIY U article. DIY believes that open-source education is a great thing for people that want to learn outside of the traditional university system. They also discuss MIT OpenCourseware, which was discussed in the DIY U article as well. This is a small step that a lot of other colleges should, in my opinion, follow. Putting information online helps the students going to the university as well as other "students" that may not be in school, but are trying to find their way. It helps society in general by making it more educated.
One of the parts of this article that I agree with most is the fact that teachers should be Synners too. Especially if even just one of their students is. The article describes that new technologies will bring teachers problems, but also "opportunities for productive experimentation" (254).
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS:
How far is technological education going to go? Is the classroom that is described in the beginning of this text a better option than classroom education? Or should we be spending money on making class size smaller or getting more resources to the classroom instead of putting that money into classes like that?
No comments:
Post a Comment