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.
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.
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