Tuesday May 17th, 9:00-10:30 – Group 1c

9:00-10:30

Julian Sefton-Green (in DLC, main meeting room)

Leanna Madill
‘My Son Isn’t Reading!?’ Parents Consider the Legitimacy of Videogames for Adolescents

Most parents of adolescent videogame players have not experienced the innovations of technologies and media in school settings, and therefore do not recognize the value in the meaningful learning and literacies that videogames enable. Although all forms of knowledge and communication should be valued, many parents need to know more about the learning happening in videogames and how to support their children as they become producers of these cultural artifacts. This research project explores the experiences that parents have encountered around videogames and their adolescent children. Through individual and focus group interviews, nine parents identify and examine their concerns about videogames, their perceptions about their adolescents’ gaming practices, and question the liegitimacy of videogames as a learning and literacy tool.

Stuart Poyntz
Media Literacy 2.0: Contemporary Media Practices and Expanded Literacies

This paper is intended to map the practices and concepts that seem to be crucial for developing a model of Media Literacy 2.0. To make clear the elements and resources central to a new model of media education, including the role educators have in fostering this model, I will present a vision of the 8-Cs of contemporary youth media practice – Consciousness, Communication, Consumption and Surveillance, Community, Convergence, Creativity, Copy-Paste, and Cyber-ethics. Each of these areas refers to a conceptual problem central to a new vision of creative media education, along with key ideas about pedagogical practices that can aid in unpacking and exploring these problem fields with young people.

Roberta Hammett
‘Tech FTX!!!’ Ninth Graders Compose Digital Responses to Romeo and Juliet

‘Tech FTX!!!’ Ninth Graders Compose Digital Responses to Romeo and Juliet will describe how 9^th graders used online digital resources to compose responses to Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. The collaborative digital products included e-zines, PowerPoint presentations, digital videos and photostories. The students’ digital texts were created within a school-university collaboration during which preservice teachers mentored the grade nine students online through the affordances of a ning (a social networking site). The paper will focus on what the texts demonstrate the students know about Shakespeare’s play, about collaboration, about themselves and one another, and about technologies. As one student commented in his blog: “Tech FTX!!!” (for the win).