Ch 15 & 16

"'Costume play' or cosplay- dressing up as favorite magna and anime characters- and live action roleplays based on a favorite popular culture text are also gaining popularity (see, for example, Cosplay.com)."

This chapter is giving me a warm fuzzy feeling for my students. I love the arts. I love Harry Potter, theatre- from high school shows to Broadway, sic-fi (sometimes), going to museums and art shows. I also love seeing the creativity in advertising, i.e. a well worded slogan, a powerful billboard, funny Super Bowl commercials.

I feel pretty comfortable saying I have the skill and passion for being creative in marketing and advertising. But many of my students (specifically Digital Imaging & Game Design students- not Accounting students!) have the skill and passion for machinima, fan art & fan fiction. Additionally, we have even done as assignments Photoshopping remixes as well as music and video remixes.

Although, fan fiction, fan art, anime and cosplay aren't part of my personality, I have grown to love my students' passion for this art, culture and expression.

Here are a few students getting warmed up for the gaming tournament my class held a few weeks ago. We decided while we were working on the brackets and students were arriving, to entertain them with "Just Dance". One of my students asked if she should dress up and I encouraged her to go for it because I believed it would make the event more exciting. 

Here's Adryana dressed up as a giraffe during the warm up to the tournament.

Ch 13 & 14

"Moreover, physical or meatspace literacy practices often mean different things within eBay. For example, one regular eBay user we interviewed said she loves coming across item descriptions that include misspelled words. To her it means she is more likely to "win" a bargain from this person than from someone who spells correctly. Non-standard spelling indicates to her someone who is less likely to be in a professional job or to won a shop and, hence in her eyes, to be less likely to know the real value of ceramics or other objects they are offering for sale."

Ouch! I look forward to sharing this with my students. I want them to see how people with lacking education are judged in the world. I feel like they think of us teachers as nit-pickers and don't realize the rest of the world will judge them in very similar ways.

I suppose I feel very strongly about my students interacting with the public because I often make arrangements for them to do so. (This year my accounting class has gone on two short field trips: Davis and Elkins College Accounting Dept & Elkins Fordland Accounting Dept, Game Design classes have held two coding workshops for elementary students & and one gaming tournament and Digital Imaging students have gone to WV Weslyan College twice and are on their way to the Art Institute of Pittsburgh and PNC Park Pirates Stadium 'Education Day' next week.)

In addition to opportunities to interact with the public, my Digital Imaging class, very regularly does work for the public. Our Simulated Workplace company name is "Pixel Pop Media" (last semester it was "Digital Blis"- the misspelling was on purpose. Hope the public understood that!)

Pixel Pop Media has been asked just this year by the public and other teachers/advisors/committees to make signs for homecoming parade vehicles, banners for the Elkins High School commencement ceremony, EHS prom invitations, bookmarks for the Mountain State Forest Festival, dance recital programs, a banner for the EHS  'Top 10%" dinner, three banners for staff events at the Tygarts Valley Regional Jail  and a variety of logos for other Randolph Technical Center Simulated Workplaces.

Generally, I have every students create a design for these projects and then offer all of the designs to our 'client'. Our client meets with me and looks that them and decides their favorite or a combination of their two favorites (and we can combine components of each). This takes the assessment, at least partially, out of my hands and the students hear feedback from the public- not their nit-picky teacher. We have also sold greeting cards for charity. I didn't have to say which one I liked the best. The public said it with their dollar. One card sold exponentially better than the rest.

Digital Imaging Original Class Logo

Attention is it!

I really enjoyed reading the chapter about attention. It is interesting that anything we want to learn is at our fingertips but sometimes it does not get our attention. Attention is also a big part of sales, marketing and business. As a Business Education teacher, this is link of attention in education and in business is especially fascinating to me.

"...having the attention of other turns out to feel very good..."

I help coach a Kids on the Run club at my children's elementary school and we have been talking about the students who clearly need attention- but what student doesn't. We know students don't always get it at home and then demand more attention from teachers- positive or negative attention.

This quote also makes me think of Facebook. The book mentions everyone having their own "customized channel for each individual" to get attention- sounds like Facebook to me.

"...advertising faces ever-increasing competition for attention."

Anyone in business, from running a car dealership to selling candy bars for Girl Scouts, knows they need to get their client's attention yet in all my business classes, I never studied the literacy and economy of attention. I think Apple has done a great job in the attention economy. I think the Ted Talk below shows a great way some companies have gotten the attention of consumers.

Additionally, I was really excited to read how the text talked about the changing role of librarians. I have recently taken and passed the Library Media Specialist Praxis test. Some people have given me a concerned response the future of libraries/librarians when I tell about considering a career in this field. I still believe there is a future for libraries and librarians. I believe the future librarians will navigate all these literacies of our future learners. I know my library is working on an update. It will be interesting to see what the future holds.

Gaming Tournament Mid Term!

The impact of this case is for my Game Design II students to plan a WiiU Mario Kart Tournament as a fundraiser for a field trip to the Art Institute of Pittsburgh and 'Education Day' at PNC Park Pirates baseball stadium. Due to some new Javascript curriculum added this year, some Game Design II students are doing a JavaScript game, some are doing a Flash game and some have started a 3-D Unity Game. Additionally, there is a Game Design I student I and a MultiApps student (similar to Game Design III) who have been given special permission to join the class. We have two students with IEPs, one student in the National Technical Honors Society and one student who was a National Game Design Finalist for Globaloria. Although we work together as a team, this class is on many levels. 

We have been planning a field trip to the Art Institute of Pittsburgh and 'Education Day' at PNC Park Pirate Baseball Stadium. We needed to raise some money for the trip so we decided to hold a WiiU Mario Kart tournament. This would take some planning and preparation.

I decided to have a Simulated Workplace Class Meeting. We determined all the tasks that need to be completed to ensure we would be ready for the tournament. Then the tasks were delegated to the students. Some students volunteered to take on certain responsibilities and some I nominated them for. 

In the end, everyone was in agreement and it was very clear what each of them had to do. One student would make attractive flyers ensuring all pertinent information was included, one created the MC script with all important announcements for the players and spectators, one created the tickets with our company logo and ticket number, one communicated with the Woodworking teacher about the 'trophy' his students were creating for the winner, and so on.

I needed to be able to depend on the students to do all the many tasks needed correctly. I was not going to take it on myself and I was not going to let the tournament be a disaster. To ensure this, I decided to make this their mid term grade. 

The challenge was to make each student have a task comparable to their peers when, most likely, it would be very different from their peers. I believed this wasn't really the case. There was no way they could be equally challenging.

Most of the students did a good job on their 'mid term'. Some had to make changes promptly to improve their work in order for it to go out into the public and I did not mind increasing their grade. 

I was initially apprehensive that a variety of different 'mid terms' for different students could put me at risk of treating students unfairly. Although, in the end I felt like it ended up being a great way to put their specific talents to best use. I still wonder what a parent might think about what their specific child's 'mid term' was without knowing the context of the project and the assignment of duties but I have yet to hear a complaint. I do think this was a good group of students for this type of assessment and a teacher may need to make that judgement call based on the demeanor of the students and the classroom culture. 

The tournament is this Friday, April 15 right after school! We will be serving bacon maple cookies and Mountain Dew Dorito cupcakes- best gamer food ever!

Not a Pencil Man & New Literacy Study

"Rather, it is important to emphasize that standards tests and benchmarks could only ever be the baseline for a teacher. That is, effective teachers will always go beyond the standards and benchmarks to enact meaningful and richly conceived literacies in their classrooms."

This reminds me of trying to explain to students the way the world will judge them based on misspelling a word or using incorrect grammar. I feel like I am warning them because I know how smart they are and I want the world to see it, too. I know if they say, "I seen that online." or if they misspell a word on their resume they could be judged as not very intelligent.

Although, there is a new technique called 'blind hiring' that has been noticed by the Wall Street Journal, NPR and the Washington Post (to name a few). Instead of submitting a resume to apply for a job (NO RESUME!), this technique has job applicants work on a project, complete an assignment or write a short story about data. This technique takes out preconceived notions about people based on their alma mater or name and just looks at their skills. I think a lot of my students could shine in this type of interviews... and some would not.

Jacques case would be a perfect example of how blind hiring can be very beneficial for a company. Clearly Jacques has skills and abilities that is academic record is not reflecting.

"Some 'new' literacies may come and go very quickly. Others will rise and rise. And under the fast paced conditions of contemporary life, what appears new may be superseded and become 'old' very quickly. There are, then, risks involved in trying to identify exemplars of new literacies."

This section of Chapter 10 reminds me of Myspace (remember everyone?:). It was a huge form of communication and literacy at one point. Now it is not relevant, other than maybe in social media/online bullying history. But on the other hand, Facebook has dominated the topic of digital literacy for business, social life for those of all ages, non-profit organizations, etc.

This statement also reminds me of the "Everybody's on WooWoo" commercial... until Mom ends up on WooWoo. 

Chapter 7 & 8

"New electronic technologies directly and indirectly comprise key products of new capitalist economies. ... Educational reform agendas serve crucially here as means to creating and maintaining enlarged markets for products of the information economy- extending beyond curricular exhortations to advocate also the extensive use of new technologies within administrative tasks of restructured schools." p. 135

"Technology and progress have become indissolubly linked in the minds of many parents, students, educators and policy makers. Schools are investing heavily in hardware, software, internet connections, local area networks and so on. Increasingly we of parents choosing schools for their children on the basis of internet access. Such practices and mindsets evince a "widely held discourse which associates computers in classrooms with technological progress, future employment opportunities of students as well as enhanced learning in the classroom." p.141

"A National Science Board publication, Educating Americans for the 21st Century, claimed that 'alarming numbers of young Americans are ill-equipped to work in, contribute to, profit from, and enjoy our increasingly technological society'". p. 135-136

There were a lot of quotes from the book I wanted to share because I had a strong reaction to them. The reason I had a strong reaction was because due to the failure of our school levy (I'm sorry, I am sure I have griped about this before). The last time I was at my local Board of Education office, I heard the lawyer for the board state that there would be no more investments in technology. Four Technology Integration Specialists have been terminated (RIF) and technology education program at the middle school is being eliminated or reduced.

The Randolph County Board of Education and Board Office staff are not responsible for this. The voters and tax payers of my county do not want to invest in education. This disappoints me most as a parent of three public school children. How can I read these chapters and not be concerned for them and all the children of our community trying to compete nationally and globally?

I think part of the problem lies within the public not understanding 'the relationship between 'proficiency' and 'playing around'."(p.140) They think, "These kids are computer geniuses when they are two!" Yes, they can play with technology but they are not proficient.

I believe "education is integral to improvement" (p. 142) and when we do not prioritize it, we do not have improvement needed in our community in a variety of ways, i.e. good doctors will not want to live in an area with poor public schools, teachers will lose morale and not stay in the profession, etc.

Critical Literacy, Active Citizenship & Empowerment

"...those working from a new literacy studies perspective have come to appreciate the radically plural and discursive character of literacy. Literacies are many, not singular"

This whole Masters program has focused on the various types of literacy and I am happy that I feel like I cover a variety of literacy with my students!

"... develop knowledge, skills, attitudes and values which will enable students to participate as active and informed citizens in our democratic Australian society within an international context."

Citizenship does need to move to the forefront. It is important for society and young people do not seem to understand the benefit (at least to them) of being a good citizen. Australia also believes it is important and has made it a priority in schools.

"The need in New Times to rethink citizenship radically- that is, from the roots- is nowhere more apparent that with regard to the themes of diversity, the new complexity of personal and group identities, and the need to constitute citizenry accepting of and comfortable with difference."

Last semester, I had two transgender students in my class! They were not really friends as one of them was a freshman and the other a senior but they did clearly share a common goal of requesting accommodations. They asked all their teachers to refer to them as opposite their physical gender and to use a gender neutral bathroom.
At times it was difficult for me. For example, should I expect classmates to call them the opposite gender when they grew up with the student as the other gender? I accidentally said the wrong gender a few times.
In the end, I really liked both the students. They were respectful, talented and the even their flaws made them lovable kids- it is hard (and always temporary) for me to dislike a student :)

"Since the mid 1980s "empowerment" has become an educational buzz word par excellence. Unfortunately, it runs the risk at present of becoming trivialized and losing it's semantic integrity and persuasive force as a result of unreflective overuse."

I just talked about this in my last post! Telling the students how their work 'empowers' them is old news so I've been working on rephrasing it (see previous blog post).