My Grandpa used to own a carpet store in Winnipeg. He used to refer to himself as the “Carpet King of the North.” During his promotional days in the 80s, he would unroll a 112 foot red carpet from the sidewalk on Maclean Avenue and right into a giant, regal chair in his store. When I was a young fat, child, he used to tell me that within all of us are two people. One is a devil figure who makes you selfish, angry and critical. The other is the one who wants to connect with people and make the world a better place. He would have called this “God’s” will. I will quickly speak with the voice of the Devil’s will and then I will speak with God’s Will and then go back to the Devil’s will again.
Devil’s will: Unsworth begins his article with, ” …J.k. Rowling’s Harry Potter books confirms the enduring capacity of literary narratives to engage the enthusiasm of young people in the 21st Century.” (62) Why Harry Potter? Why do we need to sell narratives with Harry Potter? I would like to believe that I spent a good part of my life reading because narratives speak to us as people and we are hard wired through our DNA to learn through narratives. I read because I want to know more about the world and myself. Is Harry Potter the best confirmation of our interest in narratives this century? When we justify the importance of books through some potboiler fantasy, it retards our understanding of our relationship with narratives.
Everything we know is a narrative. The Big Bang theory, Evolution, Jesus, Mohammed, The Big Crunch, Terry Fox’s run across the country, Santa on Christmas eve, Joan of Arc, The Grand narrative, Odysseus, Bathsheba, Hitler’s Death, the construction of the Great Wall. These are all stories. And we are all stories. We all tell our stories to ourselves and others. We defend ourselves in court through stories, we pay 200 dollars an hour to tell our stories to our shrinks, we tell stories at our funerals, weddings and anniversaries. Stories make up who we are. Sales people and marketers pitch us with sad or happy stories; most video games contain a beginning and an end. We listen to the humble stories of our beloved politicians. We paint stories. We sing stories in our music. We tell our children bed time stories. What is Facebook if not a story? No Unsworth, what confirms the enduring capacity of literary narratives to engage the enthusiasm of young people isn’t Harry Potter. What confirms this capacity is pretty much every discipline, hobby, interaction and branch of knowledge we study today – not Harry Potter.
God’s Will: Unsworth does a great job in his analysis of how e-literature has the potential to enrich our experiences with stories. I like how he outlines the potential experiences of reading a book and its resources online. Because we read, listen to and tell stories in multiple different forms everyday, I found it very interesting to read Unsworth’s delineation of our experiences in stories.
Because I want to get some of these aspects into my long term memory, I want to record and comment on these experiences.
1.) Story/Genesis:
We all wonder about the beginning of a story. Where did it come from. When did it start? After all, the story of Genesis is probably the best selling narrative in the world’s history. In an online platform, I think students could really access this quicker than the traditional “About the Author” at the end of a book. It’s quick access and immediate hook. The more we know and can relate to a story, the more engaged most of us will be.
2.) Invitation
Access and sampling. Marketers have been using this to sell for years. Why else would Janga? be popular? How about Dominoes? Seriously. Somewhere, sometime people were deliberately invited to these games. These invitations created relationships with these games. Kids deserve stories for the sake of stories. We all need an invitation to a good thing. This medium is fast and easy.
3.) Appreciation/Celebration
This is so important. By celebrating stories, we celebrate ourselves. Online forums and communities will never replace the connections we need as human beings. But whatever. Celebration is usually a good thing.
4.) Interpretation and Response
This is useful for students who are always online searching for information online. In my experience, students on the internet have multiple windows open at once. To have them interpreting and responding consciously to complex narratives will only help them to interpret and respond to spam and harmful information in a more skillful way. This is good.
5.) Adjunct Creation/Composition
This is why I love the internet and dislike television. Taking an active role in the composition of our narratives is not only empowering, but just plain interesting. The more we invite each other to create our own stories, the more we invite each other to connect to our strengths and preferences and work through and update our own stories.
In the end, this article got me thinking about my own stories and the stories of my students. And the more stories we know, the smarter we are considered to be. Thank you for making me Smarter, Unsworth. I’ll take all the stories I can get.
-Brian Boyce
Works Cited
Unsworth, Len. (2008). Multiliteracies, E-literature and English Teaching, Language and Education, 22:1, 62-75.
LLED 368 Media Project Response <- Our rubric, commentary on project/process, and sources. http://toondoo.com/ <-This is what I used to create the “comic elements.” Cheers, Elaine and Sarah
As someone who enjoys playing video games, I found this article to be extremely refreshing. Too often do people complain about video games being mind-numbing, distracting, addictive, etc. , without ever sitting down to play a video game. Knowing that Gee had really tried and experienced video games made the article much more valid to me.
I consider myself an advocate for educational video games, but I admit that I have never really looked at video games as a parallel to classroom instruction. However, as Gee explained the various aspects of a “good video game” and “good learning”, I found myself agreeing. It is true that video games have captured the attention of many people, including the youth we seek to enlighten in schools. Instead of demonizing video games and seeing them as time-wasting activities, why not look at them as models of how to approach teaching and learning?
I have included the list of “learning principles” in video games that Gee proposes, and will expand on them accordingly:
Identity
Interestingly, our students take on different identities in the school environment, but we never truly acknowledge this. They are asked to use different thinking strategies and methods in different subjects, while balancing being a “scholar” with being a “citizen”. We can emphasize the importance of these roles to increase self-identity and self-esteem in our students.
Interaction
In a good classroom, there is interaction between the teacher and students, and amongst students. However, interaction between students and the text or learning materials is a challenge. We must encourage students to think critically about their texts instead of just reading and memorizing information.
Production
Very often, students feel like they are sheep being herded from one course to another, without any part of the system. Letting students choose what they find important in the curriculum and teaching what is relevant to them can help increase interest.
Risk Taking
As explained by Gee, students are too afraid of failure to take risks. However, without taking risks and making mistakes, no progress can be made. We, as teachers, should encourage students to do things differently, and not penalize them for their mistakes.
Customization
Related to Production
Agency
Related to Production and Identity
Well-Ordered Problems
Challenge and Consolidation
“Just-in-Time” and “On Demand”
Situated Meanings
Pleasantly Frustrating
Keeping classroom content challenging but pleasantly so sounds challenging, but it makes perfect sense. Content that is too easy is boring, and content that is too difficult can make students frustrated and unwilling to try.
System Thinking
Too often, we fail to encourage students to look at the “big picture” of what they have learned. Having students make connection outside of each individual lesson, and perhaps each subject class, could help them become well-rounded and well-informed individuals.
Explore, Think Laterally, Rethink Goals
Smart Tools and Distributed Knowledge
Cross-Functional Teams
Performance before Competence
There are many educational games out there that can connect video games to the learning environment, but I agree that we should take it a step further, and look to the success of video games to make our teaching more successful. Our students’ worlds are not the same as the world centuries ago when the first school system began; therefore, we should adapt our classroom accordingly.
Johnnie Furlong, Ceilidh Irving, Whitney O’Donnell, and Aimee Beauchamp
Purpose:
Because of the use of imagery and strong vocabulary, we found poetry to lend itself well to visual representation. We felt that Found Poetry would be a great way to translate text into images. In our experience, students have enjoyed the process of found poetry for many reasons, the most obvious being the pressure taken off of the student to come up with their own words. Found Poetry is a great way of introducing students to new and unfamiliar vocabulary. We also found this particular way of presenting it to be interactive and engaging. The main purpose of Found Poetry is to create a new context while maintaining part of the original meaning. In this way, there is a sort of double-meaning behind each word and the newly created poem – an important process in understanding the context of poetry as a whole.
1) What process did you use to develop your idea?
There was a lot of discussion back and forth about different ideas. This particular snowballed from the suggestion of using Instagram as a platform. We felt that this particular avenue is popular amongst students and is a simple enough format to use that it’s easy for anyone to try out. As mentioned, we figured poetry would fit well in Instagram because they both encourage the use of imagery and subtext. Eventually the idea of Found Poetry was suggested and it was something we all felt fit the purpose of the project well.
2) What other pre-production strategies did you employ?
While we had a main idea for our project we did not have a focus or theme for our poem. We decided that the best way to create this was to let it come about in a holistic fashion. We agreed to spend the next few days individually taking pictures of words we found meaningful or were capable of carrying a dialogue to some degree. We then reconvened to see what we came up with and whether or not we were able to sort of suss out a theme. Indeed we noticed some similarities between the images and developed this concept of the transformation of a teacher from negative to positive. From this, we were able to piece together the images in a collage fashion on Instagram.
3) How did you assign tasks or roles within your group? How did you manage time?
We needed a lot of different images to create the poem and therefore we were able to just each go our own way and take pictures as we came across different words. This project actually allowed us to manage our time well because it didn’t require all of us to be in the same room at the same time. It was only in the last bit where we had to piece it together that we took some time to collaborate once more and create the poem. I guess in some sense we all had the same roles and tasks. We found that it worked really well not always knowing what types of pictures the other members were taking as we came to the conclusion that we felt a strong pull to some similar words. This was an interesting find that may not have turned out had only one person been assigned this task. For other aspects of the project like creating the Instagram account and doing this write up, it was done on a more voluntary basis and we did not find any issue with that.
4) What approaches would you use to assess this activity that take into account the
following: a) the multimedia nature of the assignment; b) the collaborative nature of the
assignment
a) We chose to focus on how well students were able to use this platform to create meaning. This includes aspects such as how were the images laid out on the account, how were the images edited, what kinds of emotions are evoked from this, and what else is shown in the image besides the word. We believe that this process requires a level of contextual knowledge and understanding. Therefore, this project would be an excellent way to determine how well someone understands the role of imagery and vocabulary within the meaning of poetry.
b) This project easily allows for collaboration. As was mentioned, we were all able to take pictures on our own time and reconvene at a time that worked for everyone to sort out the images. Different ideas and themes were discussed based on the similarities between the pictures and the chosen theme was agreed upon by everyone. It was a nice balance of collaboration and individual work without requiring too much of a time commitment from all members of the group.
5. What is the greatest challenge to using this approach in the classroom?
The challenge we saw was of course with the use of technology. There is always a question of economic status and access within projects based around new forms of technology. This project did require that we were all able to take pictures on our own time and this was made easier due to the fact that we all had smartphones capable of doing this. If a student did not have this then there would be some struggle for them to participate. However, they would still be able to take part in the collaboration. Also, this approach would require that at least one student in the group is able to access Instagram. The only other potential challenge we saw was the possibility of students simply posting images of words that do not relate to each other and therefore have no context or meaning. This would undermine the purpose of the project.
For our first media project we chose to create a BuzzFeed list on the 18 Stages of Getting Your BEd from UBC. Our list follows the listicle form and is meant as a satirical commentary on the BEd program.
