An interesting topic that combine Indigenous learning with multiliteracies. When I came into the PhD program, I was certain that digital literacy was the place I need to be, exploring the possibilities of Web 3.0 (way beyond what is currently happening with socially mediated Web 2.0) but came to understand that the most innovative approach to digilit research (at least in North America) is a near impossible task of making the Internet perform like paper. It is as if someone is theorizing about Literacy 3.0 by advocating for a return to Literacy 1.0 (pencil and paper, chalk and chalkboard etc.). I don’t want to get too worked up about this back to basics attitude, but will mention how Hare’s article builds upon the idea of “knowing paper” both the affordances and limitations in an Indigenous context. To paraphrase Robert Service, there are strange things done in the academic world by the mostly white and mostly male researchers who ploy their papers. Little connection to land, especially the forests that produce the raw materials. At least there is a connection to the land through paper, who knows where all the plastics and silicon that make our laptops and other mobile devices comes from?! Nevertheless, there is attempt to know better what literacy then and now may mean, and it is refreshing to read how Hare engages her discussion with connection to lived experiences.
Marshall and Toohey continue this exploration of lived experiences with their literacy project using MP3 recorders and hand-drawn storybooks, a case study for representing Punjabi Sikh heritage in primary school. The term used to describe where children are drawing life experiences from is “funds of knowledge” which might cause alarm for critical discourse theorists inspired by Freire to watch out for any for of “banking education”. But the way the term is used here, and gets mentioned in a couple more articles this week, is harmless. In this case study, mostly harmless; the students really seem to enjoy representing violent images. I’ve already posted on the strange attraction students have toward stories that end with death, that can be accessed her with this link, so I don’t want to go over what was already said there. But something I will pick up upon from Marshall and Toohey’s research is smiling characters. Most children draw characters, even in the most strenuous and life-threatening situations, with big smiles on their faces. Not that I want to give too much credit to Piaget’s theory of developmental stages, but there is a point in a child’s artistic life where anything other than a smiling character does not occur to the young artist. Of course, to prove the rule through an exception, one of Gurvinder drawings show her grandfather crying, wearing a frown on his face. Here I will point out that the girl deliberately chose to depict sadness, and it did not take too much effort for her to turn that smile upside down. It is something wonderful to see, when children express theirselves on paper, that they choose more often than not to depict happiness. James Paul Gee (2004) states that the work of childhood is play, and Richard Louv and other play-based researchers agree that a happy frame of mind is best for children’s development (take that, Piaget!).