EDCI 353B Focal Blog 3

Once again, before addressing the blog prompt I want to take a bit of space to outline some of the discussions and/or materials I have looked at in the intervening week between these blogs ( I know they were not posted a week ago but I have a terrible case of edit-itis that will require some more blogging to reduce (which is pretty interesting when I juxtapose myself with Will Richardson's blog from May 20th about "writing live," "flowwriting," and his shift away from writing in any overtly edited fashion - have a look here). So ... I read everything that was easily accessible on Will Richardson's blog, I have read a pretty substantial hunk of Steven Johnson's "Everything Bad is Good for You" because I tripped over a copy in the used bookstore on campus, and we had two guest speakers in our class - a teacher-librarian who talked about available internet and library resources, and a library technician who talked more specifically about copyright issues in general, in Canada, and in the classroom.

The big question that forms the basis of the final blog post for my crazy intensive three week Alternative Texts extravaganza is this: discuss four aspects of my own teaching (think of skills, knowledge, and attitudes) that I will need to hold on to and/or let go of within the classroom to engage my students in a time of expanding notions of text.

I am going to need to hold on to my integrity as a teacher. What I mean by this is that I am going to have to teach in a system that uses standardised testing as its primary assessment tool while simultaneously teaching (perhaps even primarily) the critical thinking skills that I (informed by whatever literature I can get my hands on but including Mackey and McPherson) think they need. I know this is not a new dilemma for teachers but it is a tiring one. Tiring because not everyone shares the same view of education and tiring because it will just plain be a lot of work.

I am going to let go of the five paragraph essay (and that is a shame as I can finally say that I am good at it). Not only is it entirely printed-text based (i.e. monoliterary) but it is also a solitary exercise. Students will need this skill, there is no doubt, but how much will they need it? Not much. But if I can get a critically aware blog, movie or web-site, I will be more than happy with that - it will need to be critically aware according to the criteria of its own text-type, it is more in-line with the activities and skills that teens already perform (Mackey's asset model and McPherson's closing the loop between what teens do for fun and what they do in school - an absolute education killer), and finally these are skills that teens are more likely to use in the future (you don't see many five paragraph essays on facebook or in the workplace).

In relation to the last point, I am going to let go of authoritarian control of the classroom. I think students need experiential learning - even when this might seem painfully slow. They need to come up with their own solutions without being told what to do by me. Google can't make you stupid[er] when you need to get what you can from it to overcome the problem in front of you. Steven Johnson spends a lot of time in Section One on games in "Everything Bad is Good for You" making the case that playing video games is more like "learning the basic procedure of the scientific method" in its approach to problem solving than mindless recreation (p.45). I want to open up space in the classroom for collaborative learning like that of Brown and Renshaw used in "Positioning Students as Actors and Authors: A Chronotopic Analysis of Collaborative Learning Activities."

Lastly, I am going to hold on to my own definition of text. It's funny because this is the place that this class took as its starting point and it may seem a little backward to reverse this far. I know what the Integrated Resource Packages list as the Prescribed Learning Outcomes for the province of British Columbia. In fact, I have them saved to my hard drive and I just reviewed them again before I sat down to write this blog entry. The PLOs indicate different outcomes for text and for representations. Furthermore, there are a lot more listings under the headings of text than there are under representations. I will go so far as to posit that the BC Ministry of Education doesn't explicitly agree with Margaret Mackey that literacy is "the interpretation of recorded symbolic representation." Either that, or that the ministry seems to feel that printed-text literacy is worthy of more valourisation than film-text. Blogging, tweeting (otherwise called micro-blogging), and other on-line forms of text are not really mentioned. It looks like I need to interpret the somewhat vague guidelines and I am going to hold on to a definition of literacy that is open the multimodal text types without valourising one type over another - particularly when that valourisation is to my advantage and to my students' disadvantage (I have a vested interest in printed-text and they have a similar interest in on-line forms).

EDCI 353B Focal Blog 2

Before I get into the questions and responses of the focal blog I think it is important to foreground some of the changes that have happened since last week's focal blog. We have spent most of our class time on activities around Paulo Friere and the banking system of education vs. democratic approaches, Tara McPherson's article "A Rule Set for the Future," characteristics of the digitally born generation, and characteristics of specific text types (newspapers, graphic novels, and film). I also spent some time boning up on Bakhtin's chronotope and a few education articles that revolve around students' use of space-time in different classroom environments.

Briefly describe texts that are traditionally favoured in your subject area and how this impacts teaching approaches and learners’ experiences.

The texts traditionally favoured in english studies are printed books and movies. The use of movies shows some real promise in the classroom and is something that I think will be easily accepted. I just want to change how I use film as a text type. Based on the Smilanich handout that accompanied our discussion of critical film assessment, I now understand that there is an entirely different grammar that needs to be used to analyse film that I have not seen used in the classroom. Usually, it seems that film is treated in the same manner and using the same grammar as printed literature and involves discussions and papers on theme and plot.

Another big problem is that, based on the information we have had imparted through articles and presentations in class, born digital youth are not motivated and/or receptive to the use of text as primary material. There is no reason that I can see that practically the same material cannot be delivered in the media types that students use and are good at (overtones of Mackey's asset model) like television shows, blogs, websites, podcasts, youtube videos, etc.

Finally, both Tara McPherson and Paulo Freire emphasize the need for greater democracy in the classroom. McPherson asserts that students require hands on work with digital media to "generate new dispositions for process and agency." In other words, to experience and develop as people, not just to learn. Freire's emphasis is on more democratic relations between educators and students and the abandonment of the tabula rasa or blank slate system of education (which also ties in with Mackey's asset model). Put together this group of work indicates that students need less lecturing and one-way communication and more hands-on, productive, multiliterate, and facilitated work. Not only that, but they will benefit in more ways than just having knowledge poured into them (if that was ever really possible).

List one alternative text type and describe what characteristics (form, content, process…) can be used to define it as an alternative text.

An alternative text type for me is graphic novels. I get it - I intellectually understand that they are the same as printed text - but I am not and never have been a graphic novel reader. Perhaps I suck at reading them. More likely, I am going to have to put in a lot of work to become that kind of reader. To go back to Mackey, they are just another interpretation of recorded symbolic representation. If I am going to let students use this media in an english class, I will have to be able to critically evaluate it first. I am going to have to read them myself and be aware of the syntax of panels, gutters, borders, etc. There will be some motifs that have elevated importance like the use of letters and documents to propel the plot, etc. All that said, it is a perfectly suitable medium and can only really be considered alternative because it is not privileged in the education system.

Describe a strategy for using that alternative text to bridge learner and learning contexts in your classroom, and how strategy challenges/complements your own teaching philosophy.

Clearly the graphic novel is an excellent bridging tool. My own children love graphic novels and, as early readers, I can see that for them these texts are engaging. If either of my boys (6 and 7) sees a page full of text, he gives up right away - even texts that they are very interested in. I am not even sure if reluctance is the major factor afoot here ... both of my boys can read but they just seem that much more interested when there is some visual stimulation.

Graphic novels are also likely to help bridge critical discussion within the larger class. I hope to have students simultaneously use different media for Romeo and Juliet. With any luck, different groups using different medias will recognize different critical elements in the works that they have. I would like to foreground the dress, movement, differences in staging that occur between the different text types.

One of the biggest challenges will be that of preparation. It will take more time to prepare for a critical discussion that includes analysis of a film, a printed text, a graphic novel, and a play all at the same time. Not only that, but I want to be able to juxtapose specific elements while we are talking about them.

I will also need to be more of a discerning critic for several of these media types. I have no experience at detecting camera angles, lenses, effects, etc.

Lastly, I am very interested in utilising Brown and Renshaw's ideas on chronotopic spaces in collaborative learning activities [2006]. These types of models seem more concrete to me than Freire's ideals or McPherson's models. At the very least, I can understand McPherson's emphasis on hands-on work and the teacher's role as a facilitator rather than as a lecturer but I think the models using chronotopic space are more sophisticated. Brown and Renshaw use a discrete space (a chronotope - literally space-time) within the classroom that signals a switch to more collaborative work (including the teacher) but allows for switching back to a more authoritative role by leaving that space. With any luck you could find your students using that collaborative space more than any other in the class.

EDCI 353B Focal Blog 1

On alternative texts:

For me, alternative texts are simply those other texts that are implied to be in opposition to primary or core texts before any of the discussion that took place in this class. That said, I was already familiar with Mikhail Bakhtin's concepts of dialogism and heteroglossia and Julia Kristeva's ideas of intertextuality. I already subscribe to the condition that all the texts and ideas I have already read mediate anything I now choose read. I think it is safe to say that everything we take in is already mediated by other texts.

So, what has changed as a result of EDCI 353B? Well, I am a bit of a literal thinker and I tend to think in terms of print when we are discussing text. I know that this is not necessarily how the term is always used but that is what I revert to. I need reminders that nearly every human experience can be reduced or renamed as text. I can honestly admit that I hadn't really thought of replacing the printed text of Romeo and Juliet with a graphic novel or Baz Luhrman's hollywood production. There is really no reason not to though - I almost immediately get that, though it helps if I get a nudge in the ribs.

What do I privilege in my daily interactions with core and alternative texts?

I privilege text when it comes to learning, at least what is traditionally viewed as learning ... the kind of learning deemed to take place in classes or for personal growth. But when I have a computer problem or a broken vehicle, the computer and internet are my go to resolution centres. I make use of blogs, videos, forums, you name it. I am also quite convinced that I learn when I play video games with my boys but exactly what skill set I am learning is debatable. I also have to admit that I have found certain movies to be very enlightening and thought-provoking - it is a short list but I could include Waking Life, The Corporation, The Ister, and a few more if pressed hard. I think it important to admit that I think there is no substitute for any of these movies in the world of printed text - not to mention that I think the movie format is inherently better suited to moving its viewers through comparative works.

What I observed being privileged - text types and related teaching approaches - in the classroom.

In my experiences in the classroom, printed text was the most privileged text type. Other mediums are certainly used to supplement but certainly not replace print. In english classes there is considerable use of multimedia materials but they are clearly used as supplements. I have seen videos produced by students but nothing that seriously contested the primacy of printed text and the good ol' formalistic approach of New Criticism.

How Mackey's [2002] 'asset model' could be applied in my subject area, and how this approach would help all learners to become literate in my subject area.

The first thing I would take from Mackey is her statement of literacy - any "interpretation of recorded symbolic representation." This means that printed text is just as good as, and certainly no better than graphic novels, comics, plays, movies, skits, etc. It matters more how you perform or interpret a symbolic representation than what kind it is. What we need from students is the ability to critically assess media, whatever form it may be in.

The second thing I would take from Mackey is that educators need to revise education so as to proceed from the kinds of skills students are good at rather than to focus on the skills they (the educators) have learned to be good at. Let's face it, students are not the same at all as educators remember when they were on the other side of the desk. This involves two parts: 1) teachers need to begin by foregrounding the skills students are comfortable with rather than those favoured by teachers and administrators and 2) students need opportunities to actively produce things to showcase and develop those skills/literacies using critical interpretations and representations.

Even if a given teacher cannot bear to let go of the printed text as a primary source, students will benefit from:

1. a thorough grounding in critical practice for as many literacy types as possible
2. the bridging effect multimedia usage can have on students experiencing difficulty with a learning outcome
3. and the enhanced learning that comes when students are producers instead of merely consumers in the education process.