Joe's Blog

Until I thought about it, I never really considered myself a “gamer,” in the sense that I sit in front of a computer screen with a headset for hours trying to master level after level while communicating with people online. Yet, I do find myself on my phone playing Angry Birds occasionally while a significant amount of time passes. The point is, online gaming has become a gigantic part of popular culture for all sorts of people. Kids especially love gaming. Teachers are recognizing this, and it is even being engrained into school curriculum. On the topic of gaming, James Paul Gee states that “For humans, real learning is always associated with pleasure, is ultimately a form of play” (Gee, 2013, pg. 316). With the vast number of educational games that are available, gaming is quickly becoming a welcomed new literacy. The game I have chosen to focus on is “Kahoot.” Currently, I use it with my first graders to help me assess their knowledge of the basic ELA skills I am teaching them. Th...

  Social media continues to charge forward every day as a significant pastime for people, especially adolescents. With it, kids can communicate with friends, indulge in their passions and interests, and be introduced to old and new experiences. As brought out by Bronwyn Williams, “Online media technologies have allowed students to construct new performances of identity and yet also reinforce existing social identities from their face-to-face relationships” (Williams, 2013, pg. 300). I decided to interview my 14-year-old twin nieces (we will call them “A” and “B”), as they both just recently got Instagram accounts and also listen to music through the Apple Music platform. I wanted to see how much their social media has impacted their lives so far. First, I asked them how much time they spend on Instagram per day. They told me about 3 hours. When asked what kind of posts they like to see, B said “I like makeup [tutorials], and funny videos and stuff,” while A agreed and added “guit...

 The topic I chose to examine is playlists. Whether through Apple Music, Spotify, or any of the other platforms available, it seems as if virtually everyone has their own musical playlists for their lives; some people have multiple different playlists they access based on the daily activities they are involved in (work playlist, exercise playlist), or what emotions they are experiencing at a given moment (happy playlists, angry playlists). A person’s music collection acts as an expressive soundtrack to their life, revealing so much about them.   I view this as a new literacy, as playlists can be an opportunity for someone to learn about others and themselves. My goal is to create an engaging and effective way for students to reveal who they are and learn more about the music they listen to and love. The project involves having each student look at a favorite playlist they listen to. It could be a playlist they created themselves, one being shared with them by someone else, o...

  As an educator, I have both an interest in teaching and in learning as well. I love dispensing knowledge as much as I love taking it in. It is easy to see that technology is becoming more accessible for and more understood by today’s youth. Many times, even more so than for adults. In this week’s reading, it was brought out in regards a school project in Oslo, some “of the students were reasonably familiar with programming, knowing more than their teacher” (Lankshear & Knobel, 2013, pg. 49). It can be challenging for teachers who are not as “tech-savvy” to keep up with changing media and how to roll with it in the classroom. But it would be a shame for teachers to close their minds to the new avenues of credible and relevant literacies digital media can offer. If educators explored these media outlets provided online, they could create curriculum engaging and enriching to students and pave the way for a deeper connection with them. Chapter One showed me how Multimodal Play ...

“What counts as literacy, how literacy changes in response to the new media landscape, and what value we should ascribe to the new forms of communication that continue to emerge and evolve online (Jenkins, 2009)." In today’s world, new media charges forward at an amazingly fast pace and shows no signs of slowing down. One area that definitely sees this change is education. Countless online educational programs are constantly emerging for teachers to choose from, providing students with a new literacy in the classroom. This emergence could be viewed as a help or a hinderance by educators. I personally see this new literacy as a tool to use in my own instruction, but not to replace it. In the Article "Literacy Debate: Online, R U Really Reading?", Motoko Rich presents the pros and cons of embracing the internet as a component of literacy by sharing the expressions of experts. While some call the web "the "intellectual equivalent of empty calories (Rich, 2008,...

"The distinctive contribution of the approach to literacy as social practice lies in the ways in which it involves careful and sensitive attention to what people do with texts, how they make sense of them and use them to further their own purposes in their own learning lives" (Gillen and Barton, 2010, p. 9).  As a teacher who has been in different classrooms over the years, I have seen firsthand how technology has become such an integral tool in shaping literacy for students. From online lesson platforms, which allow students to submit work, to educational games that kids enjoy playing and help them learn curriculum and ideas, digital programs are an engaging and stimulating approach that brings classrooms together. Yet, there is caution to be taken. As brought out by Durant and Green, this recent technological literacy strategy “opens up new possibilities for learning and exchange--and also, of course, new dangers.” (Durant and Green, 2000). One of those dangers is relying...