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!