MY MEDIA LITERACY EDUCATION BLOG
July 4, 2008
Oh the lazy days of summer. We are in the Florida summer rain cycle. Each day the heat builds up in the Gulf over the day and thunderstorms follow. We need the rain and it's good to have an excuse to sit indoors in the afternoon and read a book of fiction. Those mental vacations are a lot cheaper than gas!
The other entertainment I've been enjoying is watching Lost and using Apple TV. After a couple of weeks with Apple TV, I cancelled HBO and Showtime. There are so many shorts available and renting movies online saves gas and time. I also decided to purchase the first season of Lost and we've been watching a couple of the 42-minute episodes each night. Very interesting TV. It's a standard TV narrative format, and it would be an interesting way to study character arcs and story arcs as each show thus far has focused on the larger challenges facing the group and the background of one or two characters. It's been on for 4 seasons, and I'm only on Season 1. I'm sure the narrative will shift and I'm curious to see how it will change. Watching a show without commercials is a really great too.
I hope you are finding some way to relax this summer before you start preparing for another academic year.
June 9, 2008
I wanted to share information about a great teaching tool that I discovered yesterday. I'm currently teaching my Technology and Media Literacy class. As expected, I have students with varying degrees of technology sophistication. Students are preparing for their final projects, and I've asked them to create a WIKI*. Anyway, I've been concerned about students who might be savvy with email and word processing, but not with more complicated tasks. I wanted to tone down their anxiety so that they could focus on media and teaching. I decided to make a screen capture video that would take them through the process of creating a WIKI with Word. A screen capture video is a recording of what is happening on your computer screen. You can include voice-over to explain, and students can replay it as often as needed. I googled to find a program that would let me create such a video on a Mac. There are several available. Based on reviews, I downloaded the trial of Snapz. I signed back on an purchased it after I made my first trial video. I then made two quick videos on Linking to a You Tube Video and on Using Word to make a WIKI. I'll let you know what students think and how it goes when I post the videos at the course web site later today. If you have a Mac and your doing this sort of teaching, you might want to check out Snapz. I understand that Leopard OS does this, too, but I've not switched over yet. That's another topic.
*For samples of past Wikis, check out the TV Guides and Film Guides on this site.
May 22, 2008
I am temporarily suspending this blog as someone has hacked into this space and substitued a video that I did not link to. Until I can resolve how this happened I will not post videos. Sorry. Back later.
May 11, 2008
Yesterday was Pangea Day. If you don't know about Pangea Day, you should. Pangea Day is an event dedicated to bringing the world together through film. Sounds ambitious, but the short films offer wonderful opportunities for teaching media and narrative and building understanding. The Pangea Day site (link above) has the films. I've included one sample here. This sample is a "mobile film," which means it was made with a mobile phone. Just think of the possibilities of creating mobile films as a class assignment! Anyway this mobile film, "Dancing Queen" is really terrific. It's one-minute long, appropriate for all ages, and provides rich opportunities for students to talk and write about a film. When I saw it last night, it reminded me of Flash Fiction (a very short bit of fiction that, like many poems, has a twist or final pop of insight at the end). Check the link; I've removed the video.
May 8, 2008
I'm a bit off-topic today as I want to mention my "Charity Badge" featured in the column on the left. The Badge is there to support my favorite charity--Kat5. This organization was started by my cousin Larry after he dedicated several weeks to rescuing animals in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina (He's featured in the video). The organization has spread across the country and is dedicated to helping animals who have suffered through natural and manmade diasters. The Charity Badge idea is just one more example of how the Internet creates a culture in which we can all participate to make a difference in a positive way.
May 5, 2008
I decided to create a blog for this site because things seem to be changing so quickly! I've gotten very interested in Web 2.0 and what new sorts of social spaces mean for our work as teachers. I visited a "mashup" this morning--thought of a dozen assigments that might be drawn from it. Then I reread the Jenkins' White Paper on participatory culture. The challenges he and his colleagues identify seem so salient to 21st Century literacies and to the FCTE Commission. For example, Jenkins (a researcher at MIT) identifies three concerns that a participatory culture raises:
- The Participation Gap-unequal access to the opportunities, experiences, skills, and knowledge that will prepare youth for full participation in the world of tomorrow
- The Transparency Problem-challenges young people (perhaps all of us, too) face in learning to see clearly the ways that media shape perceptions of the world
- The Ethics Challenge-breakdown of traditional forms of professional training and socialization that might prepare young people for their increasingly public roles as media makers and community participants.
I guess my question is how do we respond to these concerns? Are they the concerns that we as educators share? What might we add to the list?
Link to Jenkins' Whitepaper (2006)
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