Friday, June 29, 2018
Thursday, June 28, 2018
Tech vs. Conversation
What is the relationship between Turkle and Wesch? Do you see them as allies, or opponents in this discussion of new media and technology?
Sherry Turkle’s article on “The Flight From Conversation” focuses heavily on the fact that we live in a time when we are almost co-dependent on our electronic devices, to the point where we have “sacrificed conversation for mere connection.” She writes how we always have a device on us, we can be in a roomful of other people and be engaging with them, but also engaging with a world outside that room. For example, I can be sitting in a Professional Development in my school building and pay attention (somewhat) to the presenter, but also be on my computer doing things unrelated to the PD. It’s to the point where we feel better about ourselves the more “connected” we are. I’m guilty of this. I might share something on Facebook, and check back regularly to see if it has been “liked.” The more people I’m connected with “like” it, the higher the rush of those feel-good endorphins. And we are not immune to that effect! Sometimes it's unintentional. This is a real post I put up on Facebook, sharing my journey in controlling my OCD, with the intention of raising awareness of mental illness which I'm sure it did, but a side-effect of this post, whether I was looking for it or not, was feeling good about myself seeing the number of likes! That's not what I meant for it!
Wesch’s article “Anti-Teaching” focuses on how students do not see the significance of education in their lives and how this is a by-product of the institution called “school” and what teaching has become: dumping knowledge on students, rather than allowing them to explore, ask questions themselves and learn from each other and their experiences. Wesch writes that “meaning and significance are assured only when our learning fits in with a grand narrative that motivates and guides us” (p. 6).
In my opinion, Wesch and Turkle are both allies and opponents, depending on the perspective you take. I see them as allies in that students (and perhaps even teachers, too) are not being challenged to ask deep questions. Wesch says, “the best questions send students on rich and meaningful lifelong questions, question after question after question” but the kinds of questions students typically ask are about the formalities of the class: how to pass, what will be on the test, etc. (p. 5). Turkle says that because of technology, “we start to expect faster answers. To get these, we ask one another simpler questions.” They are allies in that they observe the people in their social spheres asking simpler questions that do not facilitate an exploration of the world around us, which in turn would lead to learning.
They are opponents, to my understanding, in that Turkle is seeing technology as detrimental to society. It is something we need to be more disconnected from in order to maintain meaningful relationships with those around us. We are missing out on a lot by constantly being on our electronic devices. She even ends her article with “So I say, look up, look at one another, and let’s start the conversation.” Wesch on the other hand, writes that he has used technology, including social media, in the classroom to kick-start conversations and prompt students to ask the types of questions he seeks (p. 6), contrary to Turkle’s statement that social media and connectedness is detrimental. Instead, he is using it as a tool.
I think that there needs to be a balance. Technology is of course a great tool we can use in educating our students. But, it can’t be the only tool or what we are teaching our students.
Turkle, S. (2012, April 21). The flight from conversation. The New York Times. Retrieved from
https://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/22/opinion/sunday/the-flight-from-conversation.html
Wesch, M. (2010, August 5). Anti-teaching: Confronting the crisis of significance. Education
Sherry Turkle’s article on “The Flight From Conversation” focuses heavily on the fact that we live in a time when we are almost co-dependent on our electronic devices, to the point where we have “sacrificed conversation for mere connection.” She writes how we always have a device on us, we can be in a roomful of other people and be engaging with them, but also engaging with a world outside that room. For example, I can be sitting in a Professional Development in my school building and pay attention (somewhat) to the presenter, but also be on my computer doing things unrelated to the PD. It’s to the point where we feel better about ourselves the more “connected” we are. I’m guilty of this. I might share something on Facebook, and check back regularly to see if it has been “liked.” The more people I’m connected with “like” it, the higher the rush of those feel-good endorphins. And we are not immune to that effect! Sometimes it's unintentional. This is a real post I put up on Facebook, sharing my journey in controlling my OCD, with the intention of raising awareness of mental illness which I'm sure it did, but a side-effect of this post, whether I was looking for it or not, was feeling good about myself seeing the number of likes! That's not what I meant for it!
Wesch’s article “Anti-Teaching” focuses on how students do not see the significance of education in their lives and how this is a by-product of the institution called “school” and what teaching has become: dumping knowledge on students, rather than allowing them to explore, ask questions themselves and learn from each other and their experiences. Wesch writes that “meaning and significance are assured only when our learning fits in with a grand narrative that motivates and guides us” (p. 6).
In my opinion, Wesch and Turkle are both allies and opponents, depending on the perspective you take. I see them as allies in that students (and perhaps even teachers, too) are not being challenged to ask deep questions. Wesch says, “the best questions send students on rich and meaningful lifelong questions, question after question after question” but the kinds of questions students typically ask are about the formalities of the class: how to pass, what will be on the test, etc. (p. 5). Turkle says that because of technology, “we start to expect faster answers. To get these, we ask one another simpler questions.” They are allies in that they observe the people in their social spheres asking simpler questions that do not facilitate an exploration of the world around us, which in turn would lead to learning.
They are opponents, to my understanding, in that Turkle is seeing technology as detrimental to society. It is something we need to be more disconnected from in order to maintain meaningful relationships with those around us. We are missing out on a lot by constantly being on our electronic devices. She even ends her article with “So I say, look up, look at one another, and let’s start the conversation.” Wesch on the other hand, writes that he has used technology, including social media, in the classroom to kick-start conversations and prompt students to ask the types of questions he seeks (p. 6), contrary to Turkle’s statement that social media and connectedness is detrimental. Instead, he is using it as a tool.
I think that there needs to be a balance. Technology is of course a great tool we can use in educating our students. But, it can’t be the only tool or what we are teaching our students.
References
Turkle, S. (2012, April 21). The flight from conversation. The New York Times. Retrieved from
https://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/22/opinion/sunday/the-flight-from-conversation.html
Wesch, M. (2010, August 5). Anti-teaching: Confronting the crisis of significance. Education
Canada, p. 5-7. Retrieved from https://www.edcan.ca/articles/anti-teaching-confronting-the- crisis-of-significance/
Let's Make Stuff Workshop
I worked with Hayley and Dena for this project. We had some initial trouble trying to come up with an idea to either inform or resist Disney/Princess culture but we eventually landed on portraying a black girl and a white girl, seeing the same scene in Cinderella, and showing the effect that it has on different girls. Once we had an idea, it was much easier to go forward with the project, making the props and the script for a video. Our video concluded with the question of what effects Disney culture is having on our younger generations. In the classroom, we have to be aware of the media that our students are consuming so that we can teach them to be more critical of their media consumption as well as attempt to counter the effects that media has on them so that our students' social-emotional needs are being met.
Wednesday, June 27, 2018
LiveBinders Tutorial
Have you been wanting to organize all the paperwork, PD handouts, and lesson plans? LiveBinder is a digital way for you to organize all those piles of papers that LOOK chaotic on your desk, but somehow you know exactly where everything is. It’s a great way to organize and manipulate the materials as well as make some room on your bookshelves and desk.
SETTING IT UP
1. Create your account at livebinder.com.
2. When you are logged in, you will be brought to the homepage of your account. At the top, you can select “New Binder.”
3. Describe the binder. You can make it public or private. If private and you want to share it with a specific set of people, you can create an access key for them to use. Create your binder!
4. Take the tour!
Set up
Tour
GENERAL SETTINGS
1. Click settings at the top. You can change the name of the binder under the “Name” tab, make an access key for when you want to share a binder under the “Access” tab, change the colors of tabs and the background of the binder under the “Colors” tab. 2. You can create a cover page for the binder by clicking the “Cover” tab and upload your own image or search on Flickr through the link they provide.
3. Under the “Layout” tab, you can change the positioning of the tabs in the final product, whether you want them on the top or on the side, scroll or stacked. Make sure you click save!
TABS
1. The site automatically starts you off with 3 tabs. You can name the tabs by clicking in the white space. The red arrow by each tab gives you a variety of options including adding, deleting, clearing and moving tabs, as well as creating sub-tabs and changing tab colors.
2. You can add content to the tab by either adding a URL directly into it or clicking “Content” in the top menu bar. This gives you the choice of uploading documents directly from your computer or your drive, adding a text box from a few choices of templates, videos and images.
3. You can also use the buttons at the top of the webpage to manipulate the tabs within the page.
1. The site automatically starts you off with 3 tabs. You can name the tabs by clicking in the white space. The red arrow by each tab gives you a variety of options including adding, deleting, clearing and moving tabs, as well as creating sub-tabs and changing tab colors.
2. You can add content to the tab by either adding a URL directly into it or clicking “Content” in the top menu bar. This gives you the choice of uploading documents directly from your computer or your drive, adding a text box from a few choices of templates, videos and images.
3. You can also use the buttons at the top of the webpage to manipulate the tabs within the page.
VIEWING
When you want to see the page as it will appear outside of “edit” mode, click “View” at the top right, then click “Present.” All your changes should be present there.
When you want to see the page as it will appear outside of “edit” mode, click “View” at the top right, then click “Present.” All your changes should be present there.
SHARING
1. By clicking “Share” at the top right of hte page, you can choose how you want to share your binder. You can share by simply giving a person the link, or you can share through other means such as email, Facebook, Twitter and Google+.
2. Viewers can leave comments if they create an account and log in.
1. By clicking “Share” at the top right of hte page, you can choose how you want to share your binder. You can share by simply giving a person the link, or you can share through other means such as email, Facebook, Twitter and Google+.
2. Viewers can leave comments if they create an account and log in.
American Girl
Article Read: “Marketing American Girlhood” by Elizabeth Marshall, p. 131 - 135
It was a rite of passage in my family to get an American Girl doll from the grandparents when you turned 7. Every girl on my dad’s side of the family got one. I distinctly remember ripping paper off a long rectangular box, revealing that my grandparents had bought me a Josefina doll, the one Hispanic doll sold by the American Girl brand. With her I got several books and a few accessories. I remember that, even at 7 years old (though I couldn’t articulate it), I was thrilled about having a doll that I could identify with, being Hispanic myself. Eventually I got other books that were marketed for other American Girl dolls and feeling like I learned a lot about their lives in the era they were born in and I could still probably spew some random things at you that I learned from the books. I learned a lot, right?
WRONG.
Marshall writes that “American Girl products warrant our attention and cannot be dismissed as innocent and/or innovative girlhood materials” because it is all “under the guise of education” (p. 135). American Girl, from reading the this article, I would say is very insidious in its marketing strategies and how it “teaches” girls history lessons. On the surface level, American Girl appears to be this corporation that seeks to teach girls history lessons and be able to connect to girls in history (p. 131).
But the girls are only placed in historical contexts, they do not participate in the context. Rather than participating in the history that American Girl purports to teach, the history only happens to them (if at all! Oftentimes it’s just a time period they happen to live in). And regardless of the time period, the girls are all portrayed as having “limited independence and [emphasized] ‘good girl’ behaviors” (p. 132) rather than agents of change which would empower girls of today. Rather than using passive characters, American Girl could have instead used real-life girls as their dolls who were agents of change in their era (p. 133).
In addition to the girls being passive characters in the stories, the books are subtle ads for the American Girl products through their descriptions of the things the girls own, many, if not most, of which are sold in the catalog.
Worst of all, however, is how “white-washed” the history presented in the narratives are. The books included historical information at the back for little girls to read and supposedly learn history. But the stories, specifically with Kaya and Josefina, are placed in time periods before significant conflicts between Native peoples and white people. What angered me the most (and makes me want to throw out my precious Josefina doll), is a section that Marshall quotes from the Meet Josefina book
Although Josefina would never have imagined it when she was 9 years old, she would one day
be an American-- and the cultures and traditions of the New Mexican settlers and their Pueblo
neighbors would become part of America, too (Tripp, 1997, p. 83).
ALL OF THIS IMPLIES THAT LOSING YOUR LAND AND SOVEREIGNTY IN ORDER TO BECOME AMERICAN IS A “BENEFIT.”
This is all very problematic! If we want to teach girls to be agents of change, we have to give them role models to look up to and historical contexts in which these role models participated. Otherwise, American girlhood is defined only by being passive participants to whom history happens, furthering a patriarchal society in which girls are limited players.
References
Marshall, E. (n.d.) Marketing American girlhood. In E.M. Editor & O.S. Editor (Eds), Rethinking
popular culture and media (p. 131-135) (2nd Ed.) Milwaukee, WI: Rethinking Schools, Ltd.
Tripp, Valerie. (1997). Meet Josefina. Pleasant Company Publications.
Tuesday, June 26, 2018
Disney and Frozen
What is your relationship to Disney and animated children’s culture? What role did these texts play in your life as a child, if any? In that of any children you share time with? How do your memories challenge or reflect Christensen’s claims? How does Frozen meet or challenge your memories of princess culture?
It’s funny to be asked what my relationship to Disney is because rather than it being “positive” or “influential,” there was actually a giant, uncrossable pit between Disney and me. Having been born in 1992, one would think that Disney was a staple in my family’s household. But as I mentioned in my last blog post, my father is a pastor: a strict, conservative, Southern Baptist pastor. Disney was absolutely not allowed because it was “fantasy,” “witchcraft,” and “sinful.” I did watch The Lion King in 3rd grade at school on field-day (the only movie I watched in school that I can actually recall, most likely due to the fact that it was forbidden in my home!). But actually independently watching something related to Disney in my free time? Not until I was 15 and had my own laptop, giving me my first access to Disney; I watched Beauty and the Beast.
Because I grew up most of my life without the influence of Disney, I don’t think that I was as susceptible to the implications of the ideologies presented in Disney movies since I was 15 by the time I started watching so I’m not sure as to whether my memories either challenge or reflect Christensen’s claims in Unlearning the Myths that Bind Us. I never noticed for myself or critiqued the ideologies presented in Disney films, though they are certainly there. Perhaps I should categorize myself amongst the students that don’t know how to critique the media they consume, as mentioned by Christensen when she writes “Young people, unprotected by any intellectual armor, hear or watch these stories again and again…” (p. 176). Whoops. Guess I answered that question after all… And through my parents’ censorship of what I consumed, they inadvertently created a “generation living by rules and attitudes they never question” (p. 178), I never learned to critique because anything that truly deserved critiquing was censored for me.
Frozen met some of my memories of princess culture. There was still a damsel in distress (Anna), a man to save her and both Elsa and Anna are slim, hour-glass figures with white skin, wear dresses and live in castles. However, there are some key contrasts to the typical princess in older Disney movies. Elsa never needed a man to save her. Instead she saved herself with only a little bit of help from Anna, her sister. Even Anna’s “knight in shining armor,” was different in that he wasn’t royalty and he was actually quite a humorous and independent fellow who was by no means looking to save anyone (quite the contrary, Anna had to assert her authority in order to get him to help her). The villain, Hans, was not the obvious villain until the very end unlike other movies where we know instantly whom we should hate (Gaston, Ursula, witches). Rather, Hans was handsome and one is led to believe throughout the movie that he is the knight in shining armor. Watching Frozen with a critical lens really opened up my eyes to the ideologies society holds valuable and although it starts to move away from several of them, such as the damsel in distress, there is still lots of work to be done.
Reference:
Christensen, L. (n.d.) Unlearning the myths that bind us. In E.M. Editor & O.S. Editor (Eds), Rethinking popular culture and media (p. 175-186) (2nd Ed.) Milwaukee, WI: Rethinking Schools, Ltd.
Monday, June 25, 2018
Boyd and Prensky
Prompt: What do you make of the (divergent) positions of Boyd and Prensky (per our discussion in class and/or per the article above?) Where do you stand on the “digital native” terminology?
When we were in class and Dr. Bogad presented the idea of a Digital Native and Digital Immigrant, it made complete sense and I easily identified myself as a Digital Native for the second required post on this blog. After reading chapter 7 of Boyd’s It’s Complicated and skimmed parts of Prensky’s Digital Native, Digital Immigrants, I feel more caught in the middle than I did in class. I can see where Prensky is coming from: those of us born in a certain window of time grew up with much more digital technology than those that came before us. We know how to use these technologies from a very young age and much of what we know about one device can transfer to the latest of devices. Perhaps we are “Digital Natives” in the physical manipulation of technology. However, just as native English speakers should be familiar with the workings of the English language (morphology, semantics, syntax, phonology, pragmatics, the history of the English language), so should we be familiar with the technology we use. As I wrote above, and as Boyd states throughout chapter 7, we know how to use the devices and navigate them, but not necessarily think about the factors at play: how apps work, which sites are “reputable” and what makes them so, how a Google search works and these are essential if we are to be effective, participating citizens in a digital world. Boyd (2014) writes “most people have little training in being critical of the content that they consume” (p. 181). This couldn’t be more true! As I was reading his description of the “Discussion” section of Wikipedia, I immediately accepted it as fact. Until I started writing this post. I just had to pause my writing for 5 minutes to VERIFY that what he wrote was true about the debate between "insurgents" and "patriots". I couldn’t, in good faith, continuing writing without doing what he is saying we don’t do enough of!
I am now not so sure we should be using the term “Digital Native” the way Prensky has proposed we use it. As Boyd says, there are “dangerous” implications if we use the term “Digital Native” without discretion (p. 197). The term does not account for the spectrum of abilities, access and privileges that every Net Gen person possesses and assumes that every Net Gen person’s experience with technology has been identical. It also leads to assumptions that a Net Gen is able to think critically about the technology they are using, when this is not the case. We, as teachers, cannot assume that this ability comes naturally to our students and need to push for more media literacy courses so that they are not passively accepting what they see on their screens but rather critique and analyze for themselves.
References
Boyd, D. (2014). It’s complicated: The social lives of networked teens. New Haven, CT: Yale
University Press.
Prensky, M. (2001). Digital natives, digital immigrants. On the horizon, vol 9 (5). p. 1-6.
I Am a Digital Native
A Little About Me
My name is Helen Schoonmaker and I am currently working on my M.Ed. in Teaching English as a Second Language (TESL) at Rhode Island College. I have just gotten through half of the Master's program and am very excited about everything I have learned so far. I work in Fall River, Massachusetts at a community school (PreK-8) as the ESL pull-out teacher for grades 4 through 8.
If you were to ask any of my students how they would describe me, they would immediately tell you I am the "Crazy Duck Lady" and start telling you all about the duck paraphernalia in my classroom: the inflatable duck, the duck cutouts I use to track their progress, random pictures of ducks, a duck candy jar and the seasonal rubber ducks I put out throughout the year.
Summer vacation has just started for us and I am planning on going on some mini-road trips with my sister and spending some time with my ducks whose names are Summer, Daffy, Rosemary, Pearl and Squishy, pictured below! When I am not in class, I am playing piano, reading, or outside in my family's suburban farm.
If you were to ask any of my students how they would describe me, they would immediately tell you I am the "Crazy Duck Lady" and start telling you all about the duck paraphernalia in my classroom: the inflatable duck, the duck cutouts I use to track their progress, random pictures of ducks, a duck candy jar and the seasonal rubber ducks I put out throughout the year.
Summer vacation has just started for us and I am planning on going on some mini-road trips with my sister and spending some time with my ducks whose names are Summer, Daffy, Rosemary, Pearl and Squishy, pictured below! When I am not in class, I am playing piano, reading, or outside in my family's suburban farm.
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