Practice Makes Worth It

Transforming practice reminds me of Project Based Learning. I know that I learn as much as needed to complete my personal goals. Recently, this included learning to model in 3D, print in 3D, and use mathematics to create precise measurements. Hopefully, students will care as much about their projects to learn the necessary skills along the way. I believe it all starts with caring.

The chapter in the Media Literacy texts mentions not impeding students' growth with your own vision. I can see in the past where I've done that with friends and family. We must keep our ears open and mouths shut to truly collaborate. As for my classroom, I believe I can only affect my class first. It's possible that other teachers would want to emulate the transforming practice that I allow my students, but it's not expected. As with behavior, you only control yourself.

My first steps in introducing this philosophy would be to find out what larger goals students have. If they have none, the next step would be for them to experience as much variety of art forms as they can until they want to emulate one. Finally, I would try to provide them the tools, time, and guidance to reach their goals.

Quality over Quanitity

Like any other endeavor, video creation starts with a solid idea and an outline. When students imagine creating videos, I feel confident that they imagine creating film-like special effects. They want to dazzle the viewer, rather than touch them. However, we must keep the process in perspective. Videos are just one more way to tell a meaningful story. Journaling can easily translate to a quality video. People want to know how others feel, what they enjoy, and where they live. This being said, you don't want your students to crank out low-quality tripe either. We must give them basic tools and training. Some great open source softwares for this are Audacity for audio recording and editing, iMovie for basic video splicing, and Handbrake for using scenes from existing DVDs.

In one existing classroom, videos are created to show the life cycle of insects. Time lapse videos can be created using iPod Touches or iPads to capture minutes or even days. In these videos, students narrate what stage the insect is living through at given points on the video timeline. Videos are an incredible way to relate the amazement that exists in daily life.

Start the Conversation

Tying real-life to the classroom will be a staple of the modern age. We cannot pretend that the classroom is a separate place, protected from the wiles of the world.

To do this effectively, we need to reach out to our communities to get more ideas than our own. Community leaders may have projects where students can participate in informing their community about local issues. In creating information, students are, in turn, learning to appreciate that information. They are also learning to convey messages effectively.

The conversation begins with us. We can contact others and begin a dialog that will change us, our students, and our community.

The cartoon below relates to how different people perceive media differently. 

Tools of the Trade

Why do teachers integrate digital media, mass media, and popular culture into the classroom?

How do teachers incorporate digital technologies and children’s popular culture into their teaching practices?

I will do my best to answer these two questions posed by our teacher in a Master's level Digital Learning course. First, teachers do their best to appeal to students' interest. Whether we realize it or not, everyone is short on information in the topics where they are not interested. That's just the way the human brain works. We specialize. I have been watching a few history of skateboarding documentaries lately, and those guys were intensely interested in riding a skateboard. The competition aspect became a factor eventually, but they learned because they wanted to. The converse begs to be answered, however. What do we do for students that aren't interested in what we are presenting? 

One approach in the last 25 or so years has been to implement dazzling technologies to entice learners. I'm sure this has worked in maybe half of the times it was implemented. But kids today are "into it" and "over it" more quickly. I believe we are tasked now with finding real technology tools that will last. I'm continually impressed with basic tools like the hammer, wrench, and drill. These tools are mainstays of construction. I believe we need to give children the technology equivalent. Programs like Photoshop and Illustrator are now the way that everyone creates professional and amateur graphics, alike. They are becoming the hammer and wrench of computing. But open-source programs, such as GIMP and Inkscape, are hot on their heels in giving everyone free access to be able to create high-quality graphics and designs. I'm eager to see where technology takes us, but we have to always be open to learning the tools of the trade if we want to enable students to create.

The Choice

Media literacy is multifaceted at the very least. According to Hobbs and Moore in Digital Media Literacy, "Digital and media literacy includes the ability to access, analyze, compose, reflect, and take action in the world." Another good touchstone in thinking deeper about media literacy is Andrea Quijada's TEDx talk, "Creating critical thinkers through media literacy," where she outlines the ways that she became a critical thinker concerning media. We, as humans, have the power to ignore ads when they try to manipulate us, but this process is active. We cannot passively interact with media if we want to defend against the constant onslaught of messages that media presents. Children are affected by these message, perhaps in a stronger way. We, as educators, have a responsibility to show students that they have a choice.

The goal of media literacy can be accomplished through familiarization and evaluation of any media type. When we work through how something was made and with what motives, we begin to see that we, too, can create in a similar way. Hands on activities with rearranging cuttings from magazines is a great way to get children to analyze and restructure ads. However, ads are not the only culprits of media manipulation. Students could read an article and respond to its author, either hypothetically or by sending a letter to the editor. Teachers have a voice in students' lives. If we pull back the curtain, students are more likely to realize what is lurking in media.