Visual Literacies

What I think I notice the most about this genre of study is the powerfulness of simply using my eyes (and sometimes my ears) to learn about something. I think that at times, I lose sight of the meaning behind the phrase “a picture is worth a thousand words;” and at times, how helpful a picture can be in aiding understanding of a concept or a representation. Throughout my browsing of visual literacies, I found that ReadWriteThink.org actually has a comic creator that allows for both students and teachers to utilize. It isn’t as high tech as some of the other sites that are out there, but it is free, and very straightforward. I thought it was cool because it was very simple to understand, and it didn’t allow me to write a lot in the captions, but it was a great starting point for me. It was awesome to be able to create my own comic, and because of it’s usability, it could also act as an introduction for students, before they were immersed in creating their own visual literacies for class. GRR all the way!

                                            

I created a virtual field trip with music using photographs I had taken over the summer when I worked for SayYes. I used iMovie for my creation, and it was a blast. This ended up being more than just a visual literacy since I added music, but I think that the concept remains the same.  This would be great in the classroom if I wanted to frontload information for students, without asking them to read a lot of text (my ELLs and struggling readers would appreciate it). The trip was Howe Caverns but I could essentially create it on any topic linking to what I am teaching in class. I think this would be useful for Science teachers too, especially when delving into complicated concepts that students may need supplemental information for.

This comic would be a great talking point for students in a Social Studies class. Instead of giving students mindless handouts or doing popcorn reading from a textbook, introducing a comic such as this one is a great way to create a chase of pace for the students. This is current and relevant to them, and would therefore be more engaging of a topic, and it can also be used as a bridge to connect some of the content in the textbook.  Long (2008) advises: "Teacher educators – especially those of us who have chosen multimodal literacies as an intrinsic part of our practice – are currently traveling a precarious and unpredictable path in education that requires us to reflect upon and act as pedagogical advocates for the students in our care"(p. 498). A teacher who incorporates this kind of visual literacy is taking a step away from the traditional literacies of textbook reading and handouts, and introducing students to a new kind of learning - one that is multi-modal and critical, and can carry them far beyond the classroom walls.

 This is a picture of Monet's Impression Sunrise painting. I chose to add it to my blog because I think that art is a great visual literacy that I wish I myself was more educated in. I love going to museums and seeing paintings, but sadly I don't think I could tell the difference between Impressionists' paintings and a Baroque-era creation. Students should not only be versed in reading and writing, but I also think they should be well-rounded and cultured - which is where art and music steps in.

“Because the majority of instructional texts at the elementary level contain various types of pictorial representations, both for motivational and instructional purposes, attention to viewing as a language art has become paramount in today’s classroom. In order to be considered literate, students must be taught to “read” visual images in addition to connected text” (McVicker, 2007, p. 85). Visual literacy in the form of paintings, sculptures, statues, pottery, etc., will help students become well-rounded individuals, and it would not be a stretch for ELA and Art teachers to collaborate and work together to make connections across the classes and really get student thinking critically about the content in both classes. For example, if a class is reading Wuthering Heights in ELA, they could be looking at art from that time period during Art class. (This is just one example, I'm not that creative, but I have faith that it can be done!) I think that students need more than just the basics to get them through school, and Monet may just be the ticket.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                 

Internet Projects & Quests

The instructional model that I choose to read about and research is Internet projects. The videos from the UConn website were very informative, and also easy to understand. I like the idea of Internet projects because they allow for collaboration between 2 or more classrooms. I can remember when I was in elementary school, every year I had a different pen pal from a neighboring town, and even though it was only 30 minutes away, I was extremely awed by the fact that I was communicating with someone that didn’t go to my school and I had never met before. The possibilities of sharing a project with a school in a different city or country are endless - cultural exchanges can take place, students will learn about a way of life that is not their own (in addition to learning the content of the project), and they will also learn how to collaborate with a group of students that they don’t know very well.  I think that while getting started, I will probably have to stick with the web-based projects since they are already created and available for me to become familiar with. Once I become more adept at handling all of the aspects of the projects, I would like to write my own “spontaneous” projects, because I feel as though I can adapt them to fit the content that I want to teach. It was extremely hard for me to find sample Internet projects using Google, so instead I used the thinkquest.org website that was recommended by the UConn video where students create internet projects and submit them to a competition. I felt that these were a mix between a project and an inquiry, because a lot of the submissions were created by a group of students, but the projects were similar to an inquiry in that they answered a specific research question.

I chose the 2009 winner, a project all about saving the planet and its species: http://library.thinkquest.org/08aug/00473/#

This project/quest has a short movie in the beginning; one that I think would address the multiple learning needs of a classroom, even ELLs. Sox & Rubinstein-Avila (2009) assert that in terms of Webquests, “The use of illustrations, graphic organizers, trade books, and audiovisual resources provide scaffolding, making the content information more easily accessible for ELLs” (41). This quest had animations, an easy to understand organizational structure, and the directions were very clear. Scrolling over one part of the quest would result in a short description popping up, which I think would be helpful for an ELL if they didn’t know what a term on the site meant. The language was also very straightforward, another benefit for English-language learners. I think that this sort of project has great potential for my classroom, mostly because it can serve as a culminating project for what my students have learned using technology, and also to demonstrate their knowledge of critical literacies. As a teacher, it will be my job to educate students on finding reliable sources using the Internet and being critical about the information they come across. Helping to be come “healthy skeptics who learn how to critically evaluate Internet information through several guided experiences with websites” will serve them in the future, long after they leave my classroom (Leu, Leu, & Coiro 2004, p. 100). this project will also be a way for them to demonstrate what they have learned.

Overall, I think that Internet inquiry, projects, and quests have great potential for learning in my classroom and I can’t wait to get started!

Digital Stories in the Classroom

I think that there are many ways that a teacher can incorporate the use of digital stories in a classroom. I actually have some experience with creating a digital story since I has to create one for my Methods teaching class with Kelly Chandler-Olcott. Instead of posting my rough cut of a story, I decided to post this one, which I found on YouTube. I chose this because it is a student telling her family's history through a digital story format. She has music, smooth transitions, and also a real sense of voice throughout the entire video. I spent a good 3 or 4 hours on my digital story - it's a complicated process trying to fit the pictures with the script, reading the script, adding music, and then timing everything so the recording flows over just the right image at the right time. It can be tiresome, but by the time I was done with my video, I was extremely proud of myself - and that feeling only intensified when I showed it to my classmates. Having a personal experience with crafting and sharing a digital story, I can support Richardson (2010) when he quotes Marco Torres by saying that "these videos 'should have wings' and be created for real audiences outside the classroom" (p. 123). The digital story I created required me to reflect on my thinking and learning through my experiences student teaching, and because I knew that it would be viewed by many people, I put a lot of effort into it. I think that this will hold true in a K-12 classroom as well - students don't want to put in a ton of effort if they know that their work is not going to be recognized in any way. Digital stories changes that, because it can be posted and viewed by a huge audience. Incorporating a digital story as a part of the year-long portfolio assignment that many schools enforce is just one way to get students involved. When I was student teaching last semester, I wanted my students to create digital stories at the end of our Outsiders unit, detailing how they were perceived by the world vs. who they really were inside, since it follows one of the many themes in the novel. Unfortunately, I didn't have time to work on this with my students, as I had to leave before we were able to finish the novel. This is just one way to incorporate digital stories into the teaching of literary devices like theme - but it could be used to discuss setting, mood, irony - practically anything!
Like this video does, another way to use digitial stories in the classroom is to introduce and recognize the multiple cultures that may be represented in the classrooms. This girl talks about the history of her family while linking it to Iraq's culture and the country's history. Students could easily do this as well, whether it is used as a community building process within the first couple weeks of school, or as a side project that can be worked on in conjunction with other units. Figg & McCartney (2010) assert that developing 21st-century skills is a function of individuals expressing their own voice using written and oral language, as well as many other electronic formats and media" (pg. 43). Digital stories allow students to have a voice - a voice that someone will be listening to long after the project is finished. Teachers who incorporate opportunities like this for students to work with technology for classroom projects is a way for students to practice their 21st centruy skills in a controlled and purposeful way. It seems that technology and learning can be seamlessly linked.

Podcasts!

I must admit that the idea of podcasts is somewhat foreign to me. I've heard of them, sure, but I've never listened to one, or searched the internet to find information on them. After doing the readings for this week's class, I was very interested in the potential they may have in the classroom, but also in my everyday life. The thought of downloading news to my ipod and listening to it at the gym (even if that does sound dull) has a certain level of appeal. I was raised in a family that watched the news every night on TV, while also reading the newspaper during commercials. The fact that I barely have time to check news updates on the internet during my hectic life makes me feel extremely guilty, but also inspired after hearing of the potential podcasts hold. After perusing around the Internet to find some podcasts that I would actually enjoy listening too, I found that searching them through iTunes was much more helpful. The first one that I found, Literacy 2.0: The New Frontier of Literacy in the Digital Age is hosted by The International Reading Association and Bam Radio, which have partnered to bring the latest insights from the new frontier of literacy in the Digital Age. This podcast discusses the role literacy as it has been affected by the new technological advances. This particular podcast incorporates the role of music as an introduction, and it composed in an interview format. Listening to it, I felt as though I was listening to a regular radio program, similar to NPR. Richardson (2010) warned that some podcasts will be a rough cut of material - with "ums" and "ahs" and pauses that may make the podcast seem less than smooth. This podcast however, incorporates seamless transitions between the interviewer and interviewee, quite possible because it is a very formal publication, as it is backed by the IRA.
In the classroom, one example that I was thinking about is if a student is absent for a few days. If teachers create podcasts of their lessons, or even podcasts of instructions and directions for a lesson or a unit, think of the time that could be saved when that student returned. In my own experience student teaching, I would have at least one student absent from every class, and the extra time and stress it took out to catch that student back up just put me even further behind with everything else. I know that it seems like a lot of work for a teacher at first, to record every single lesson or unit overview, but the days when 5 or 6 kids are absent because of band, or a field trip, it will be a great resource to use. In the same vein, if some students are working faster than others, creating podcasts of material can allow for a teacher to split the class and work with the lower level kids individually, while the more advances students listen to podcasts and work ahead. This follows the advice of Putman & Kingsley (2009), who believe "it is natural that educators, including those who focus on literacy, increasingly seek ways to intergrate various technological innovations, including digital media, into their instruction to reach this new generation of learners" (100-1).  Brilliant!
In addition to this idea, I think that podcasts (this one including) can work as a bridge between teachers and parents. Whether it is the students who are creating the material and talking about important topics, or if it is the teachers who are creating podcasts with the goal of communicating to parents and administrators the year long goals of the classroom, I think that this form of communication has the power to help change education for the better, mostly because everyone will be on the same "page" in terms of what is going on the classroom.

Wiki

The Wiki that I decided to follow for this weeks topic is a Recipes Wiki and it is one of the most comprehensive sites I've ever seen.
On this wiki, I could see evidence of the many characteristics that Richardson (2010) discusses in his chapter. At the top of the screen there is an "Edit" button, so if I felt like there weren't enough vegetarian recipes on here, I could easily add some of my own. There were 4 drop down menus that allowed for browsing the wiki for recipes (by ingredient, by course, or alphabetically), top 10 recipes, other recipe pages, and finally popular pages. There were also quite a few advertisements for shopping and other related businesses that flashed along the side and the bottom of the wiki, which I felt kind of took away from the wiki itself. There is also an option to leave comments on the recipes, and at the bottom of whatever recipe I click on, there is a section titled "categories" so if I want to find other recipes that include cinnamon or vanilla extract, those categories will pop up automatically. Overall, I felt like this was a very comprehensive resource for searching and finding recipes.

In terms of wikis in the classroom, I really enjoyed the Hunt & Hunt (2006) article and its explanation of the dried out research project. I can distinctly remember writing my sources and my quotations on notecards and thinking that this was heartless drudgery in its finest. The authors make a good point when they introduce the multigenre paper being more appealing because it allows for imagination and experience, not just stuffy facts from dusty books and shelves. The benefits of using the Internet as a source for information are outlined, but they also ask a good question - "As literacies expand and change, we have to reevaluate who the experts are. Can we be our own experts, if we get enough help from the outside world?" The assignment that was accidentally created for the students by one of the authors, was very innovative and unconventional. As a student, I would have loved to be an expert and work collaboratively to publish some of my own knowledge on a site like Wikipedia.  Wikis are great for this reason - they allow for anyone with (or sometimes without) knowledge on the topic to post their ideas and information.

One example that really emphasized this idea comes from the chapter in Richardson (2010), where news was posted on Wikipedia amazingly fast after the Indian Ocean earthquake in 2004. I thought to myself that the people posting may actually have more reliable information than a news station that was broadcasting the event. In a fairly short amount of time, the entry on the earthquake was edited a ridiculously high number of times, and the information was in fact accurate. Thousands of people worked together to create an accurate account of the event, each editing and posting until they entry reached a desired level of accuracy. This example proves that "everyone together is smarter than anyone alone" (Richardson, 2010, p. 57). At the same time, I think that students would most definitely be more invested in their work because they would know that it was going to be published, and also read by a large audience. If I could incorporate this kind of "writing for the real world" in my classroom, I would.

Despite these potential benefits and uses I could understand some of the frustrations that were voiced in the Wheeler, Yeomens & Wheeler (2008) article. If I did have my students perform research in the vein of potentially posting it to a wiki, I can anticipate that some students will resist because they will want to keep ownership of the material. Making the decision to post their hard work on the web is, at the same time agreeing to let it be edited by others, deleted, added to, and altered in a many other ways. It will also be a nameless entry, which some students may not agree with. I think that in this case however, the benefits definitely outweigh the pitfalls.

Taylor Mali, teacher and slam poet, gives his mind on what teachers make. It's great, I watch it sometimes to cheer me up when I'm feeling super stressed about school. Enjoy!