Tradition and Modernity

Old and New Practices

Side by Side

Containers of Knowledge

• • the desk                                                          organized
  • the journal                                                      reflective
  • the paints                                                        creative
  • the computer                                                  endless

 

“New Technologies compete with old ones – for time, for attention, for money, for prestige, but mostly for dominance of their worldview” (Postman, 1996).

 

Preparation for the future.  The Backpack of Privilege. A symbol of learning?

 

“Ultimately, we suspect that an analysis of who is in the business of maintaining web servers, publishing web materials, designing interfaces, and so on, would likely reveal that a significant digital divide in regards to gender remains. As has been the case with the rise of most communication technologies, from print through television, males are the primary adopters and tend to control the content and format of information diffused through various media irrespective of how audiences change through time (Faulkner,2001; Graff, 1995)” (Dobson and Willinsky, pg. 13).

 

A case within a case

                             ideas of preciousness

                                                           delicate

                                                                       handmade

                                                                                 meaningful objects

                                                                                                       tell stories of love

                                                                                                                        through colour

                                                                                                                                             and beads.

A case on the wall:

a bookcase

ideas organized to inspire

reimagined by others in delight

boxes of supplies holding possibility

 

“Schools regulate access to orders of discourse” (New London Group, 1996, pg. 71).

 

Transformed from an image and description

to a story of space:

Containers                                 Cases                                 and                                 Space.

 

to breathe

to work

for focus or fun

to adapt

and reimagine

 

“Our view of mind, society, and learning is based on the assumption that the human mind as embodied, situated, and social. That is, human knowledge is initially developed not as “general and abstract,” but as embedded in social, cultural, and material contexts. Further, human knowledge is initially developed as part and parcel of collaborative interactions with others of diverse skills, backgrounds, perspectives joined together in particular epistemic community, that is, a community of learners engaged in common practices centered around a specific (historically and socially constituted) domain of knowledge”   (New London Group, 1996, pg. 82).

References:

Postman, Neil. (1992). Technolopoly: the surrender of culture to technology. Knopf.

The New London Group. (1996). A pedagogy of multiliteracies: Designing social futures. Harvard Educational Review 66(1), 60-92.