Today in my Literacies in Today’s World course, we talked about visual literacy. As a class, we defined the term and involved the act of seeing visual information, examining the information, finding the meaning, using schema, and having others interact with the text along with each other. In class, we talked about films and even watched some of the first silent pictures as examples of visual literacy. Up until today, I was not aware that there was such an aspect of literacy dealing with the “visual.” And then it made sense to me, because I then referred back to Gee’s article from our class in my head regarding video games and how they are a form of literacy. Before reading this article, I had always considered video games to be a form of entertainment, like most in the class. But it is literacy because we learn to associate symbols and icons with words and ideas. Just like video games, movies have this same idea and effect. It is easy to assume that video games are not educational because there are many kinds that possess a violent or war-based theme. However, there are more and more toys and inventions being created that are targeted towards toddlers and young children to help them learn. I can concur from personal experience, I have a three year old niece who has her own “laptop” that teaches colors, numbers, and shapes, just to name a few. And she truly does learn from this toy. I truly advocate these toys as a future teacher, and I even support educational video games as well. Perhaps when I have my own classroom 3 or 4 years from now, technological lesson plans will advance and I’ll utilize video games with my students each day (all for educational purposes, of course!) This way, I can make sure that my students’ visual literacy progresses just as well as their ability to read.
Literacy center April 28, 2008
I cam across this website today. It has a lot of great fun, interactive lessons and games to teach children of early grades things like colors and numbers, words, and ultimately to read and be literate. The website is Literacy Center.
I think any of us who intend to teach, or who currently teach the lower grades will enjoy this site.
Helpful Reading Strategies April 27, 2008
While surfing the web, I came across this website that has a long list of reading strateging. The website specifies that these reading strategies are to be used for social studies, however, they could be used in different subject areas. Some of the strategies listed we learned about in Teaching Literacy, but there are many others that I found interesting and useful for teaching any subject, such as 1-2-3 and Pattern Puzzles. The website explains every strategy in depth, and for those that require a charts and worksheets there are ones to print. I hope you find this website as interesting and helpful as I do.
NYT Article on Online Lingo
Below is an article I found in the New York Times from April 25 about online lingo, students who are starting to use it in their academic schoolwork, and the possible deletion of capital letters in sentences. It struck because it was almost identical to the discussions we had in Tweedie’s module. I just thought it interesting that this shows up in the NYT a month later. Cool stuff, check it out.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/25/education/25writing.html?_r=1&ref=education&oref=slogin
Video Games a Form of Literacy
Before reading James Paul Gee’s “Semiotic Domains: Is Playing Video Games A ‘Waste of Time’?” I always viewed video games as a form of entertainment. I consider video games a way to relax, play, and have fun. It is another way to get away from reality and enter a virtual world. What I have failed to realize was that it is a type of literacy. Because of this reading, I now view video games in a different way.
Gee is right that traditionally we do think of literacy as having the ability to read and write, but literacy is much more than that. I found it interesting to learn that multimodal literacy, which is a mix of words, images, sounds, music, and movement, can accomplish far more than just words and can help uncover a deeper meaning of the content. I never thought how we do this when we read books with pictures in it to get a better understanding of the material. Video gaming does just this. In order to uncover the meaning of images, sounds, and movement, we need understand how to interpret each and to be literate. When people play video games, they are learning how to uncover the deeper meanings of the message. In order to do this, they have to be literate and in not just reading and writing but in understanding different body movements and sounds. Everything around us requires literacy. For example, we need to be literate in driving in order to drive a car; a doctor has to be literate with medical terms, and in order to deal with money we have to be literate in math and with numbers. Playing video games may not be such a waste of time as people think, nor are they just a way to relax. They are a way to become literate in understanding materials that involve multiple elements. People have to put the different elements together to gain understanding and make sense of what is occurring on the screen.
Comics Help to Understand April 24, 2008
Wow… McCloud’s comic was insightful. What I enjoyed about it was that it brought about many points of interest to me, I have a particular interest in art among other things, and found his analogies essential to understanding his concepts about icons and how there are different types with different meanings. It never occurred to me that cartoons allow us to focus more on the idea that is being presented to us. And I never would have imagined that this was one main reason why we respond so well to comics. Art is more gripping, and those pictures seem more gripping sometimes. This makes perfect sense that there are many people my age who would rather watch television than read a book, the imagery and icons are more appealing; this idea can easily coincide with our second article based on video games. I personally love how it was said that we humans are a “self-centered race” because we see OURSELVES when we look at a comic or catroon. It goes as far as to say that we become the cartoon. We are able to envision ourselves in order to understand what is going on. In his conclusion, McCloud points out that “society is inventing new symbols regularly, just as comics artists do”, which can be said about every evolving medium, just as we envision the internet and new ways of technology to evolve. Overall, this comic provides an understanding for what we have been discussing all semester.
Learning Contracts and Learning Centers
In my Differentiated Instruction class, we talked a lot about learning contracts and learning centers. I found the information EXTREMELY beneficial.
A learning contract is basically a way of varing assignments for your class, keeps them on task and holds them accountable for their work. For example, a Holocaust unit in social studies, you may say task one choose either A or B. One may be to write a diary entry as if you were a teenager in a camp, the other option might be to write a poem. Then the next part may be choose one task from section 2. The first task may be to create a poster, the second to create a skit. Then the third section may have 5 choices and you tell the students to choose 3 of the five. All assignments having varing degrees of interest, difficulty, methods of learning, etc. The students have a due date for the project, have to manage time wisely, and report their progress. This gives the students choices in how they learn. It keeps them motivated and engaged in the learning process. It makes them responsible and accountable for their own knowledge and learning. Ground rules are laid out for the contract, each student writes the options they chose, and signs the contract. It is really cool.
The other thing is learning centers. We see these all the time in lower grades as a way to keep other students busy while the teacher engages in guided reading groups. But what we learned today is that rather than just making these centers be busy work, they can actually have instructional value. We also saw how they can be utilized regardless of the grade level. I recommend any future teacher look into these two strategies. You will not regret it.
“Naked in the Nonopticon”
This article was reminiscent of the all the Facebook and YouTube discourse we have been having class. The article begins with comments on Facebook and its issues of privacy; the point that is most interesting to recognize is that students have the most issues regarding mini-feed while they “readily post photos from wild parties” (np). That does prove a point. As a student, I think the main aspect of this argument is that we want to be able to control our lives and how they are perceived by others… especially how they are perceived on the internet since it is such a global medium. Anathan makes the same point in the article, “what we really demand is some measure of control over our reputations in the world” (np). Of course we want to feel in control of our own lives, so it is only natural that we control what is posted about us for all the world to see. It is tough because no matter what, we are being judged by whoever. There will never be a world without judgment and that is just how it is. This entire ideology can relate back to YouTube as well, along with all the videos we discussed, some are entertaining and some are downright idiotic. What how do we know what is real and what is fake? Well with the exception of “LonelyGirl”, we never really do know. And that’s why YouTube is so popular. You get to be someone else, if you choose to be. Why do you think so many people enjoy acting? Who wouldn’t want to play the role of someone else for a day? It’s nice to spice things up sometimes. While we strive to “be ourselves” and to keep what is personal private simultaneously, the article points out that this is difficult to do in this day and age, “We are no longer in control of our public personae as so many of our fellow citizens carry with them instruments of surveillance and exposure” (np). Either way, it seems almost inevitable that all our secrets could be exposed, and that’s frightening probably to many. I guess it only serves beneficial to do the best we can do and hold on to any control that we have left over our lives.
CMC-computer mediated communication
Computer mediated communication has become a major tool in our society. More often than not people will communicate over email, IM, or text message rather than over the phone or face to face. There are multiple theories for and against the use of CMC. CMC users cannot play off of the other persons’ non-verbal cues. These non-verbal cues include such things as physical context, facial expression, tone of voice, interpersonal distance, body position, appearance, gestures, touch, and smell. One of these is the social presence theory, which suggests that text based messaging deprives CMC users of the physical presence of the other person. This causes our communication to be more impersonal, individualistic, and task oriented. What this means is that this type of communication takes away the personal aspects of communication and makes up rely only on the words that people speak rather than the emotions behind them, eventually turning us into emotionally stunted machine-like people. Another theory that proves this is the Media Richness Theory, which classifies each communication medium according to the complexity of the messages it can handle efficiently. What this means is that face-to-face communication provides a rich mix of verbal and nonverbal cues while CMC is limited and is more appropriate for business, not social relations. This theory shows that you cannot build meaningful relationships through mere computer communication, face to face personal interactions are required for this. A third theory proving this is the Lack of Social Context Cues Theory which states that CMC users have no clue of their relative status and norms for interaction aren’t clear, so people tend to become more self-absorbing and less inhibited leading to increased flaming, or hostile language. These 3 theories share a cues filtered out interpretation of CMC. The absence of nonverbal cues is a permanent flaw of the medium limiting its usefulness for developing interpersonal relationships.
online preditors revealed in a country music song? April 23, 2008
The internet is an ever growing field of social networking, but is this a good or a bad thing? You can be anything or anyone you want on the internet, as long as you are hiding behind your computer screen. This can be or a bad thing. You never know if the person that you are talking to is actually that person, or if they are pretending to be something that they are not. In the song “Internet” by Brad Paisley, he explains this concept perfectly.
I work down at the Pizza Pit
And I drive an old Hyundai
I still live with my mom and dad
I’m 5 foot 3 and overweight
I’m a sci-fi fanatic
A mild asthmatic
And I’ve never been to second base
But there’s whole ‘nother me
That you need to see
Go checkout MySpace
‘Cause online I’m out in Hollywood
I’m 6 foot 5 and I look damn good
I drive a Maserati
I’m a black-belt in karate
And I love a good glass of wine
It turns girls on that I’m mysterious
I tell them I don’t want nothing serious
‘Cause even on a slow day
I could have a three way
Chat with two women at one time
I’m so much cooler online
So much cooler online
When I get home I kiss my mom
And she fixes me a snack
And I head down to my basement bedroom
And fire up my Mac
In real life the only time I’ve ever even been to L.A
Is when I got the chance with the marching band
To play tuba in the Rose Parade
Online I live in Malibu
I pose for Calvin Klein, I’ve been in GQ
I’m single and I’m rich
And I’ve got a set of six pack abs that would blow your mind
It turns girls on that I’m mysterious
I tell them I don’t want nothing serious
‘Cause even on a slow day
I could have a three way
Chat with two women at one time
I’m so much cooler online
Yeah, I’m cooler online
When you got my kind of stats
It’s hard to get a date
Let alone a real girlfriend
But I grow another foot and I lose a bunch of weight
Every time I login
Online
I’m out in Hollywood
I’m 6 foot 5 and I look damn good
Even on a slow day
I could have a three way
Chat with two women at one time
I’m so much cooler online
Yeah, I’m cooler online
I’m so much cooler online
Yeah, I’m cooler online
Yeah, I’m cooler online
Yeah, I’ll see ya online
this is a scary concept, because it is true. This happens every day on the internet and there is no way to tell if the people that you are talking to are really themselves. This opens up many doors for sexual predators. It is important not only to monitor yourself on the internet but to watch your kids as well. The internet is here to say, and this will continue to happen forever.
As a future educator I think that it is important to educate America’s youth about internet safety. In the future this can possibly become a real class. I think that I will try to fully educate my students about this concept and will definitely bring up an internet safety course to my future bosses.
Learning Literacy 