The Significance of Audience

A couple quotes from the Chavez and Soep (2005) piece, Youth Radio and the Pedagogy of Collegiality regarding audience that I intend to use in my reflection paper for Culture, Media, and Education:

"The significance of an audience is not, of course, measured by size alone" (410)

"The anticipated audience acts as a witness..." (419)

Globalization and Beyond

I've been thinking about a funny comment my 4 year old son said to his teacher recently when I was visiting his classroom:

(addressing the teacher) "Do you know what I learned from T.V.? I learned that in space there are these big blue things. Do you know what they're called? Supernovas. When the sun gets really old, it will break and..." (makes a smashing motion with his fists).

I thought that it was pretty cool that 1) he learned that in the first place, 2) he learned it from T.V. and 3) he described the concept as something that he learned.

I didn't get to talk to him about it right away, but wondered what it was that he was watching. I couldn't recall watching any shows about supernovas with him.

Later that evening while he was getting ready for bed, I asked him, "Where did you learn about supernovas?"

He responded, " From the movie. At my friends house."

"What was the movie about?"

"The university," he replied.

So after we talked about the differences and similarities between the universe and university, I thought more about his remarks. He engaged in this learning with another friend who shares a similar interest. Watching the show was a very social activity for the two boys. I'm curious about the differences in learning when watching a T.V. program alone versus watching it with a friend.

The family of my son's friend is from India. Often, I talk with his parents about education in America and learning in general. Up to now, I haven't thought about the boy's educations in terms of globalization and what their world will be like as adults, but this Jon Stewart clip from last night got me thinking about it. Enjoy!

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Deep Space Naan
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Ron Paul Interview

Multimodal Image Sharing Tool

Kangaroo Rock: A Multimodal Artifact

Here is an artifact that illustrates the affordances of multimodality that my students and I made together last school year.

From Technologies and Literacies

Although I wrote the text (sometimes transcribing verbal stories or descriptions from my students), they contributed to producing the newspaper by drawing pictures, providing captions and descriptions, and telling a story.

From Technologies and Literacies

Both students and teachers all over the school enjoyed the newspaper. We printed out several hard copies and also sent copies electronically to our "subscribers".

Have Meaning, Will Travel

The most important concept I took away from chapter 7 of Travel Notes from the NLS is that "meaning can travel and traverse modes" and that "literacy does not travel" (Kell, p. 165).

The mode of Noma's meaning (her house was in need of repair) transformed as it traversed the margins of distinct activity systems, from verbal presentation (or performance) to written text, to conversation and community discourse.

Multimodal Literacy

FLY ME TO THE MOON
by Eric Carson

made in Comic Creator

I am in favor of letting children explore language and text in a variety of formats, such as picture books and comics. Beyond just reading Manga or comics, online sites exist that provide image libraries, dialog bubbles, and story frames that allow kids to create and share their own comics.


By searching 'comic creator' and 'manga creator,' several interesting sites are found, including:

MashON Spore This site has an extensive image and background library, however it may be more interesting to boys (similar to the descriptions of Shonen manga). I tried to make my own comic, but felt a bit clumsy using their editor.

Make Beliefs Comix! This site has only a few choices for images, but may actually encourage greater creativity by requiring the user to create imagery through text to compensate for limited graphics.

Newspaper Clipping Generator Although not really multimodal on it's own, this fun newspaper clipping creator could be combined with visual images, allowing kids to create authentic looking digital artifacts to enhance projects.

Comic Creator Another simple way to author one's own comic strip. More options for story board size than Make Beliefs. Also, these can't be saved on the website. One must print or save it locally.

Laika, a Soviet space dog, was the first living mammal to orbit the Earth.

Educational Leadership's Literacy 2.0

In Educational Leadership's current issue(a publication of the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development), each article centers around a theme of Literacy 2.0. One entire article is devoted to defining 2.0 literacies.

Personally, terms like Web 2.0 or words beginning with i make me cringe. Do we really want to start numbering our collective advancements of ICTs and literacy practices? Does literacy 2.0 accurately reflect that language and communication have been changing and responding to human activities for thousands of years before wikis and blogs? Was all of human language prior to the printing press the equivalent of the literacy beta-test?

Back to the current issue of Ed Leadership, Naomi Baron contributed an article about mobile technologies' effects on speech and written language. While much of it is similar to her discussions in Always On, it does highlight the preoccupation of the popular press with the superficial effects of acronyms popping up in student speech and writing. Baron argues that relaxed attitudes towards grammar and spelling may be more detrimental.