CREATIVE COMMUNICATOR
Students communicate clearly and express
themselves creatively for a variety of purposes
using the platforms, tools, styles, formats and
digital media appropriate to their goals.
(ISTE, 2016)
themselves creatively for a variety of purposes
using the platforms, tools, styles, formats and
digital media appropriate to their goals.
(ISTE, 2016)
Coursework Artefact #1
In January 2015, I began my second course of the MET program ETEC 510: Design of Technology-Supported Learning Environments which explored research and related networked media tools and how they inform the design of technology-mediated environments. Throughout this course I was prompted to choose a variety of appropriate tools to meet desired objectives and communicate complex ideas clearly and effectively. For example, in the first module of the course I was asked to create a two minute digital story video introducing myself and my professional background to my peers. While I used a digital whiteboard software, my peers’ videos ranged from animations, image videos or laptop camera videos. Later in the course, I was given the task to create a stop-motion video to communicate my learning on a topic connected to the course. This video using cut out printed images to explain the application of game elements to learning environments. As with my digital story at the beginning of the course, this was a new video format in which I could present content for my intended audience.
One of the readings from this that has had the greatest impact on my teaching practice is the report Confronting the challenges of participatory culture: Media Education for the 21st century (Jenkins, 2009). Through reading this report, I was introduced to the idea of a participatory culture which is characterised by “relatively low barriers to artistic expression and civic engagement, strong support for creating and sharing creations” (Jenkins, 2009, p. xi). What I learned most about the process of completing projects in the ETEC 510 course is not simply how to use new digital tools, but the importance of sharing my work with the greater public to be a contributing member of the participatory culture. As Jenkins states, we as educators need to “shift the focus of the conversation about the digital divide from questions of technological access to those of opportunities to participate and to develop the cultural competencies and social skills needed for full involvement” (Jenkins, 2009, p. 4). As a learner I need not only the skills to be a creative communicator, but the understanding to share such learning with the greater community.
Application to Practice
In September 2016 when I returned to classroom teaching, one of the texts studied in my Grade 10 Language and Literature class was a graphic novel documenting a woman’s experiences during the Iranian Revolution. Using the ideas I acquired during the ETEC 510 course, I designed a summative learning task for students to complete further research on a related topic and present their finding in the form of a video. My participation in the course not only equipped with me various software options and video methods I could provide as options for my students, it emphasised the importance of not restricting the way in which students communicate their message. Just as my peers in the course, my students produced their works in various formats such as digital and physical whiteboard videos, stop motion videos, animations, image videos, puppet shows and live interviews to creatively communicate their research. Once the video projects were complete, I walked students through the process of setting up their school YouTube channel on the Google Apps for Education domain so that they could share their video projects with other students at the school. I want my students to harness the skills to not only creatively communicate complex ideas, but to be apart of the participatory culture.
Coursework Artefact #2
In May 2016, I began my eighth course in the MET program was ETEC 540: Text Technologies: The Changing Spaces of Reading and Writing. This course explores how text technologies may modify reading and writing processes - a topic that is extremely relevant to my work as an English language teacher. In this course I learned more about the impacts of innovations in technology on the way in which a society behaves. As classical scholar and university librarian James O’Donnell points out in the 1999 radio broadcast From Papyrus to Cyberspace, “one generation’s frontier becomes the next generation’s reality” (O'Donnell & Engell, 1999). Though one can assume that with each new frontier there are gains and losses. For example, the invention of the automobile sparked a transportation revolution, but with this improved accessibility we also implicitly accept thousands of car-related deaths each year. Advancements in writing technologies have unpredictable changes in human roles and geography.
James Engell, Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Harvard, highlights the point that such revolutions of technology do not occur suddenly but are instead a gradual shift within societies. Just as manuscripts continued to be produced well after the invention of the printing press, it is common for information from the internet to be written down on paper (O'Donnell & Engell, 1999). The primary text for the course Orality and literacy: The technologizing of the word, details the transition from oral to literate cultures and the intellectual, literary and social effects of the corresponding technologies. For example, the printing press led to the spread of unorthodox ideas across the world and new forms of democratisation, while the shift from a primarily oral to literate society brought with it new lines of exclusion between those who could read and those who could not (Ong, 1982).
In 2012, scientists find that the brains of preliterate kids respond like a reader's brain when they write their ABCs, but not when they type or trace the letters (Pauly, 2016). Another research team reports that college students who transcribed lectures on their laptops recalled more information than those who took notes by hand because the use of laptops results in shallower processing (Mueller & Oppenheimer, 2014). The report explicitly claims that "students who write out their notes on paper may actually learn more" (Mueller & Oppenheiner, 2014, p. 20). Across three experiments, researchers had students take notes in a classroom setting and then tested students on their memory for factual detail, their conceptual understanding of the material, and their ability to synthesize and generalize the information. The two types of note-takers performed equally well on questions that involved recalling facts, laptop note-takers performed significantly worse on the conceptual questions (Mueller & Oppenheimer, 2014). This research suggests that perhaps completing tasks on paper may be more beneficial for students.
Through the close examination of the invention of the typewriter, I communicated what I had learned about technology’s effect on reading and writing in my short documentary The Shift from Handwriting to Typewriting:
The challenge with emerging digital technologies is not that such societal shifts are occurring, but finding the most effective way new technologies can be integrated with the way things are currently functioning.
Application to Practice
The shift from handwriting to digital text and their associated issues continue to plague educators as one-to-one devices become the norm in schools. My current English Department meetings often consist of heated debates concerning whether students should complete their coursework on paper or digitally. The topic seems to polarise the teachers within the department and we cannot collectively decide on the "correct" answer. However, sometimes the purpose of note taking is simply to collect information. During novel studies I often have my students take notes to record key quotations or details from the book we are reading under the categories of the elements of fiction (e.g. setting, characters, style, theme). When forced to write on paper, I find students’ notes quickly become disorganised and chaotic. Factor in that a novel study last several weeks - sometimes months - I find students’ paper notes become more of a hassle than helpful.
Instead of making the paper-or-digital choice for my high school students, I share research findings and we collaboratively discuss the benefits and advantages of each format. I then prompt them to make the choice for themselves and give them the opportunity to change formats if they feel they made the wrong choice.
My vision for my students is for them to discover for themselves how they work best in a time where they are living and learning during this technological revolution. While reading and writing remains at the heart of education, emerging technologies will continue to alter the concept of literacy itself. As we continue to move from written text to digitized information, educators must adapt their didactic methods to coincide with modern technologies. The technologies of handwriting and typewriting need not exist in a binary relationship in our postmodernist culture. They can co-exist, offering us a multiplicity of ways to communicate where each is geared for its own different purpose.
References
Jenkins, H. (2009). Confronting the challenges of participatory culture: Media Education for the 21st century. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Mueller, P. A. & Oppenheimer, D. M. (2014). The Pen Is Mightier Than the Keyboard: Advantages of Longhand Over Laptop Note Taking. Psychological Science, 25(6).
O'Donnell, J. & Engell, J. (1999). "From papyrus to cyberspace" [radio broadcasts]. Cambridge Forum.
Ong, W. J. (1982). Orality and literacy: The technologizing of the word. London: Methuen.
Pauly, M. (2016). A Brief History of Handwriting. Mother Jones, 41(5), 60.
Turple, C. [Cris Turple]. (2015, February 11). What is gamification? [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EXvJfDGtBO4.
Turple, C. [Cris Turple]. (2016, August 27). Documentary: The shift from handwriting to typewriting [Video file]. Retrieved from https://youtu.be/stAMlG_lmHo.
Turple, C. (2015). ATL: Self-management skills (organising) [Google slides]. Retrieved from https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/15tr8CgSRB9yMctrK7y1TQ_11-TnY9mrmZ5jjl17Mlb4/edit?usp=sharing.