I completed Educational Psychology during my undergrad in 1996 at SFU. I remember learning about scaffolding, Skinner’s rats and that Piaget was an old guy. And my prof was exceptionally boring and seemed to lack a personality. That’s about all I remember from that course. Flash forward to September 2019 and starting ETEC 512. I thought to myself, ‘here we go again with the rats!’
On the contrary. I enjoyed ETEC 512 very much and learned/re-learned theories through careful, detailed reflection. Dr. McCracken was exceptionally supportive and pushed me to think critically and produce the best work possible. The course had a huge impact on re-shaping my pedagogy and influence on future work as a teacher. Importantly, the content of the course made much more sense because it was situated with my past 20 years of teaching experience and surrounded by collaborative peers in a culture of like-minded educators.
Now to link this to ETEC 540 and Task Six – Emoji Story:
When I read Shaun Lau’s post, I immediately guessed the movie because I had watched it about a month ago and the compound words of the title were pretty simple:
money + ball = Moneyball
I understood Shaun’s baseball clues, but then saw the emoji of the cup/saucer and the blue ‘M’ and got stumped. Maybe it wasn’t Moneyball? What is ‘coffee+M’? When I went to comment on Shaun’s post, I noticed Allison commented on his creative use of the ‘M’ symbol with the tea to make the word ‘team’…..DUH! I can’t tell you how many times I said ‘coffee…mmmmm!’ out loud!
‘coffee’ + ‘M’ = COFFEE…..mmmmm! OR ‘tea’ + ‘M’ = TEAM
Vygotsky was a vague glimmer in my memory from 1996, but there was no way I could deny the knowledge I gained in MET about constructivism. It was a friendly reminder that when we are learning and making meaning, it is dependent on context. In Shaun’s emoji story example, I was coming from a coffee culture. I wake up in the morning and the first thought is coffee. Not weather, news, children, or good morning to anyone….coffee ONLY! When reading the other emoji stories, some I knew quickly because it was part of my experience and others I was could fathom a guess because the language and context was absent in my experience.
Thinking about how this can relate to my students at school, to remember that learning is socially constructed and founded on the diverse environments, cultures, and experiences of the students that I teach. Vygotsky and Boroditsky (2011) agree that language shapes thought and support the learning of new things and knowledge. What I think I can draw together from my accidental misreading of Shaun’s post and the work completed in MET is that situated cognition is constructed from culture and communities in which we identify. When adding Kress (2005) and the New London Group (1996) to the mix, I posit that applying multimodal and multiliteracies approaches to classroom learning has greater potential to reach a diverse range of learners through increased access to ‘text’ and knowledge.
Key connection and takeaway from this post for my future teaching: Sometimes it’s the little things, like mixing up a ‘tea’ and ‘coffee’ emoji that can make a big difference to overall understanding of an entire learning situation for a child in your class. Know your students and teach to wide range, whether that means multimodal, literacies or UDL; a one-path route is not the way.
Boroditsky, L. (2011). How language shapes thought. Scientific American, 304(2), 62-65.
Kress (2005), Gains and losses: New forms of texts, knowledge, and learning. Computers and Composition, Vol. 2(1), 5-22.
The New London Group. (1996). A pedagogy of multiliteracies: Designing social futures. Harvard Educational Review 66(1), 60-92.
******NOTE: I added this after Video Session #3 on June 27, 2020 9:00am*******
Ernesto mentioned empathy stage in design thinking during our video session this morning while discussing the emoji stories, rhetoric, context.
There are countless versions of design thinking processes. I simplified ones with elementary students where the empathy stage is ‘look, listen‘, ‘ask‘ or ‘understand‘. Whether we use the word empathy or others, the stage is all the same; understanding the audience and why/how it is important for them to understand what we are designing. Having used design thinking a lot in my time as an ADST teacher, I am grateful that Ernesto pointed this out because I had not thought of it as part of the wholistic design process, rather as an isolated component of meeting needs of learners.