Media Tools 3

For my final media tools project, I decided to use Gimp to create a remix picture of some of Banksy’s work. I’ve never really used anything photoshop-like to create an image of my own and so I used Camtasia to record that process of me trying to figure out how to use Gimp. 

I connected my ludic experience with a few theory concepts from class, including some of Kellner and Luke’s ideas on critical and political learning environments where students are given tools to deconstruct media and then create their own productions that break out of the hegemonic reinforcement of messages created by those in power. Kellner and Share state, “the new technologies of communication are powerful tools that can liberate or dominate, manipulate or enlighten,” which is why it is crucial that educators teach students how to critically analyze technology and use it to create their own powerful messages resisting and moving beyond oppression.

When starting out with the tool, I had no idea where I wanted to take it or what I was going to do with it. I opened a bunch of Banksy photos and decided to just go for it and do what I felt like doing with what I saw. The rest is above and I found that even though I had no idea where I wanted to take the piece, because I was given the tools to create something that was meaningful to me, I played around and created a remix picture that adds further meaning to Banksy’s already very powerful photos. I feel like I really had an “embodied learning adventure” and made learning my own, which ultimately allows for deeper learning and critical thinking to be applied outside of the classroom, without the presence of a teacher (Thumlert 2015). Even though I hadn’t used photoshop or a program that is photoshop-like, I found Gimp to be quite intuitive to use and I didn’t run into too many issues when wanted to create a certain affect with the burning tires and police signs across the girls’ bodies. The tools were well-labeled and if you hover of them the tool provides a small explanation of what it does. I didn’t find any constraints while I was using the tool.

Camtasia was a fantastic tool as well and I had no trouble figuring it out as I have used iMovie quite extensively and they felt quite similar. It was funny hearing my own voice recorded and played back to me and I found myself getting quite awkward in the beginning because it felt like I was talking to myself. But once I got started with Gimp and figuring the tools out, it no longer felt awkward and I almost even forgot that I was being recorded. Fantastic tool to use both in the classroom and for personal projects. While I was using it, I thought about how great Camtasia would be to model projects, ideas, assignments in class and it would be a whole new virtual instruction manual for students looking for a little extra support outside of class.

Final Project

https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/id1226210707

Education, Algorithmic Culture & Social Transformation: A CALL TO ACTION

Inquiry topic: The Relationship Between Engaging in Creative Agency (Media Production), Politics and Social Justice Transformations

Explored the relationship between what happens when students are asked to engage in creative agency and production pedagogies around politics and current world issues, and what effect that has on students’ learning and social transformation.

Questions:

• What is the educator’s role in helping guide students’ curiosity towards current world issues? Who gets to decide what, in terms of world issues, is important enough to engage with and be brought into the classroom?
• What types of multimodal tools and technologies would be best suited for students to engage their creative agency in the classroom? What type of reach can students have with engaging in media production, and what type of an impact would that have on social transformation and politics?
• How can students who are allies best support these social justice initiatives? (i.e. BLM, Refugees, Trump, Muslim ban, Environmental Sustainability). How can we as educators promote algorithmic thinking in our schooling?

What I learned:

Like Bilkstein (2016), that if we looked at our education system, its content, and pedagogy from the understanding that children should be programming computers rather than being programmed by them, we would have individuals who would be much more likely to think about real-world problems (like Trump, wars, environmental sustainability, human rights violations to name a few ), as a puzzle to be programmed and solved, or at least, approached without the fear of being wrong. We would have individuals who are far more critical in their thinking, and therefore, actions, than in current society.

Teachers = co-constructors, facilitators.

What I designed/created:

1. What’s been done.
2. Engaging in Algorithmic Culture.
3. Social Transformation.

How I learned:  process of becoming ethnographic/autoethnographic researcher, writer, filmmaker, author, game-maker, remix artist.  Researcher, developer, producer.

I was responsible to critical production and social justice, but was irresponsible to the traditional way of doing things.

iBook

https://www.facebook.com/pg/nahkoandmedicineforthepeople/videos/?ref=page_internal

http://nahko.com/music/

http://www.earthguardians.org

file:///Users/urshiankhalid/Desktop/Issues%20in%20Digital%20Technology/tmpWQWRfk.html

Experience course themes, theories, and readings!

Connected Learning. “socially embedded, interest-driven, and oriented toward educational, economic, or political opportunity”

Professor Thumlert’s article, “traditional curriculum has ‘driven a wedge between learning and pleasure’ – disengaging students from learning in the classroom and on their own, which takes away from the quality of our lives as global citizens.

Kellner and Luke examine critical media literacies in relation to ethics, democracy and curriculum, focusing on critical/ethical and political dimensions of creating learning interventions. Media forms have a powerful role to play in organizing, shaping, disseminating information, ideas and values, which ultimately create a collective public pedagogy. Kellner and Share suggest that education loses its “transformative potential when programs teach students the technical skills to merely reproduce hegemonic representations” without the awareness of ideological implications or any type of social critique. I agree. What’s the point of education if all we’re doing is creating clones of sheep on a conveyor belt heading essentially the same direction – being programmed rather than being the one who’s doing the programming. We can’t “program” the world and education for a better future if we’re constantly being “programmed” to sustain hegemonic ideologies.

Here are 2 of my remix videos from the iBook.

Media Project 2

http://www.philome.la/iamUrsh/a-post-trumpolyptic-world/play

A Post-Trumpalyptic RPG game on Twine speaking to youth resistance and social justice.

Doing this project of courses connected with almost all of the theory we have been discussing in class. I specifically found myself to be having a connected learning experience as my work was “socially embedded, interest-driven, and oriented toward educational, economic, or political opportunity,” in creating an RPG game about current political happenings in the world. To create the game, I found myself really doing the research on what Trump has specifically done since the time of his inauguration, and how that has affected world politics and America itself. I happily researched how the youth today could be of assistance in protesting, and doing active political work. Normally doing research for a project feels like added work, but because I was having a ludic experience with creating the game, and I wanted solid pathways in terms of if/thens in the context of my game, I did the research. Using Blikstein’s thoughts on our culture of you’ve either “got it” or you haven’t, I found that I had to use trial and error to make sure my pathways, the way the pictures were positioned, the general look of the game exactly as I wanted it. Creating the game also, in a way, increased my confidence in the fact that coding isn’t all that hard and I can do it if I’d like. Before this class, I hadn’t really ever wanted to code because I always saw the complex series of numbers, brackets, numerical figures and they always freaked me out. But having created this game through trial and error and guiding myself through it with tutorials online, I feel a sense of confidence in my coding abilities that I didn’t have before.

The tool itself is fairly easy to use and I didn’t have a whole lot of trouble using it. There were points where I felt stuck in terms of not knowing how to connect two pathways to the same outcome, but I looked on Twine wiki and the tutorial Kurt had put up. I didn’t really see a lot of limitations with the tool itself. The only thing I could think of was it would be cool if Twine itself could offer a comprehensive video tutorial in the program itself of all the ways someone can imbed media, like sound, videos, etc, as it can get a little annoying to have to go online and search each time. Otherwise, I had a connected, ludic experience where I was able to connect theory with application and enjoyed the work while doing it!

Week 12 [ Mon March 27 Blended] Connected Learning: Critical Participatory Cultures & Informal Learning

This week’s reading titled, “Connected Learning: An Agenda for Research and Design” explores student learning when that learning is “socially embedded, interest-driven, and oriented toward educational, economic, or political opportunity” (Ito, 2013). The article states that if students are able to pursue a “personal interest or passion with the support of friends and caring adults” they are able to link that learning and interest to academic achievement, career success and/or civic engagement. I wholeheartedly agree with this statement as growing up, I was always encouraged by my parents to pursue what interested me school.  I shared similar interests with my friends and had teachers who believed in providing students with the opportunity to explore what interested them, which I think led to my academic success growing up, as well as being highly-driven and engaged in civic and political issues. I am not afraid to voice my thoughts in and outside of the classroom as I feel passionately about my interests. Because my learning was connected to my personal interests in and outside of the classroom, I was much more inclined to engage in critical production to expand my learning beyond just what my teachers taught me. As a child, I was always athletic and interested in how the muscles, bones, ligaments, tendons and other connective tissues worked together to make the body move. Because of the opportunities I was given to explore my athleticism and theoretical knowledge both in and outside of the classroom with peers and teachers who encouraged connections between concepts and experimental learning (i.e. acting out a live model of the filament processes through which the muscles move with my peers), I found myself carrying this passion into other subjects and aspects of my schooling.

The article states that for learning to be resilient, adaptive and effective, it must “involve students’ individual interest, as well as social support to overcome adversity and provide recognition”.  While reading this, I couldn’t help but think about individuals who are focused primarily on the traditional modes of academic studying (sitting down with a textbook or lecture material for hours each day), rather than engaging with related or unrelated extracurricular activities in addition to their school work . Growing up and even throughout university, I noticed that some students would primarily be focused on academics and had no other activity than to go from home to school and back. Whereas throughout university, I was captain of the varsity wrestling team, was an exec on multiple sport leadership councils, was a Residence Advisor, a student health ambassador and participated in multiple other side extracurriculars. I couldn’t help but notice the difference between the quality of my university experience and that of my friends and peers. I found that more often than not, I exceeded in the same classes that we were in, while maintaining an extensive experience profile relating to what I was learning in class. The experience applying what I learned in class (i.e. Kinesiology, anatomy or exercise physiology class) to my matches during wrestling or when training, or applying a theoretical background to the conversation with speaking with people as a student health ambassador helped feed my passion for life long learning in health and vice versa. I knew there was value in learning what was meaningful to me — and with the supportive relationships I had with friends, professors and teammates, I was able to form “diverse pathways and forms of knowledge and expertise”.  I am now able to contribute, share and provide feedback both within formal, academic circles and informal, impromptu social groups.

Week 11 [Mon March 20] Critical Making: Putting the Critical back into Making

This week’s readings explored critical making, DIY content and just how critical some spaces are. In the article titled, “A More Lovingly Made World”, Wark makes a distinction between critical making through media production and a pre-assembled maker-culture that has individuals putting together the stuff that has already been made (Wark, 297). Wark states that “maker culture seems mostly about basic concepts, in electronics, for example, or knitting patterns,” and that it is “not about actual labour processes” — which I think defeats the purpose   of what critical production is supposed to do for students. In class this semester, we have been talking about inquiry-based media production as a tool for students to become problem solvers and be engaged in their own learning. I think if we pre-assemble projects and outcomes for students and then ask students to assemble these pre-constructed projects, we’re defeating the purpose of IBL and allowing students to feel empowered by their learning.

 

This leads me to Pinto’s, “Putting the Critical Back into Maker Spaces” and the thought that, “if you’re just solving problems from a teacher with ready-made solutions, you’re doing it wrong” (p. 38).” I think if we as teachers are to implement IBL in the classroom, we need to do it all the way and commit — allowing students to explore problems that are important to them.

 

Week 9 [Mon March 6 ] From the ‘Transparency Gap’ to ‘Gender Gaps’ (and Boundaries)

Bray, F. (2007). Gender and Technology. Annual Review of Anthropology. 07 / Issue 36. (pp.37–53)

This week’s readings drew some interesting ideas about technology and gender to my attention. While I usually tend to be well-versed in feminist/post-colonial/gender theory, I hadn’t really thought about technology and its relationship with gender. While I’d always known about (and been upset at) gender disparities in the business world, reading Bray and Jenson’s articles gave me an added perspective in just how “bad” it is. Bray states, “gender is expressed in any society through technology. Technical skills and domains of expertise are divided between and within the sexes, shaping masculinities and femininities,” which makes sense to me. Hearing about women being forced out of STEM subjects by privileged men and hegemonic ideas of what is and isn’t for women is not something that’s new. I think stereotypical gender roles have been so finely ingrained and weaved into the fabric of our society that many women believe when someone tells them, “that’s a man’s job!”, which nudges women away from the STEM subjects and into other fields of work. This is hegemonic masculinity, as women become “passive beneficiaries of the inventive flame”. Men like the ones described in this article decide that other men are the only ones who can and should be able to study those subjects.

Jenson, J. & de Castell, S. (2014). Gamer-hate and the ‘problem of women’: Feminsim in Games, in Diversifying Barbie and Mortal Kombat: Intersectional Perspectives and Inclusive Designs in Gaming. (Chapter 13)

This article provided me with some really solid thoughts on gender, technology and intersectionality. It really is a shame that the misogyny is so bad that women feel the need to step back from positions of power and social capital where they have a voice, because some men feel threatened by the presence of a woman in “their” domain. It sounds almost ridiculous that someone would threaten a “massacre” or rape and/or murder because a perfectly capable and qualified person, who just happens to be a woman, decides to utilize her voice.

The article states that for “over three decades, it has been evident that women do not choose education pathways that lead to careers in the technology industry in numbers similar to their male counterparts”, which is because of the “intense and vitriolic harassment” women face by men and sometimes other women. Jenson states, “if you venture into traditional male territory, the abuse comes anyway. It’s not what you say that prompts it—it’s the fact that you are saying it”. So why is it that just the fact that women are participating in conversation about STEM subjects that pisses men off? What is it about the term “feminist” that is so frightening? I believe the issue is an institutionalized, systemic one. As I mentioned in the reflection above, hegemonic masculinity and misogyny has been weaved into our schools, systems, institutions and corporations. People don’t understand that feminism doesn’t mean hating men, or that women are superior to men, but that everyone is equal. I read this last week, and it reminded me of this article and our discussions in class: “equal rights for others does not mean less rights for you. Its not pie.”

I also really appreciate that Jenson spoke about intersectionality in her article as it is incredibly important to what feminism actually entails – because if your feminism doesn’t include women of colour, queer, black, poor, disabled, trans, women with all sorts of backgrounds, its not feminism. I think its important to recognize while it is terrible that white* women in the gaming/STEM/tech/gaming industries are targeted and harassed, at least they have a platform to use their voice (as dangerous as it is). How many queer, muslim, women of colour and different abilities and backgrounds make it to those positions in the first place? As the article states, “gamer gate is a part of a larger, systemic problem in games industry and culture, and whose history is far longer than either; and second, feminist approaches and practices can and do provide a means to initiate a broad-based, grassroots transformation, with a powerful cross-sectoral infrastructure.” An intersectional understanding of feminism and how that relates to opportunities and socio-political transformation in the STEM/tech/gaming fields is imperative to creating a safe and equitable society.

Week 8 [Mon Feb 27 Feb] Critical Literacies in the Age of Fake News, Algorithmic Culture & Trump Tweets

Kellner, D., & Share, J. (2007). Critical media literacy, democracy, and the reconstruction of education. In D. Macedo & S.R. Steinberg (Eds.), Media literacy: A reader (pp. 3-23). New York: Peter Lang Publishing

This week’s readings by Kellner & Share and Luke et. Al examine critical media literacies in relation to ethics, democracy and curriculum. In their article titled, “Critical Media Literacy, Democracy and the Reconstruction of Education”, Kellner and Share suggest that we live in a time where the majority of information people receive comes less often from print sources and more typically from multimedia formats. This means that media forms have a powerful role to play in organizing, shaping, disseminating information, ideas and values, which ultimately create a collective public pedagogy. The media (and before that the top-down tree branch of governments, institutions, political agendas) controls what information is put out to the general public.

To build just, democratic societies where individuals like Donald Trump are not elected, or are seen running for office and immediately shot down by the collective, intelligent public stating a strong and resounding, “NO!”,  our education system must empower students and citizens to critically read media (and other political) messages and produce media of their own. This would allow citizens to be more active participants in a democratic society – one that doesn’t elect bumbling buffoons like Trump. Students would be much better equipped to challenge the narratives they receive in day to day life, and be able to then engage in critical discourse analysis (on smaller and larger scales depending on what’s going on in the world at the time) with a problem-solver approach to issues.

The issue where we run into some trouble, I think, is integrating critical media literacy on a larger scale outside of, and not only in media studies class. We need to re-conceptualize and expand on our understanding of literacy and pedagogy so that we as educators are able to lead students to a “reconstruction and democratization of education and society”. Perhaps we can do this by of course, leading by example and implementing the IBL, self-directed teaching models as discussed in class, but also from a top-down policy approach where education is less a prescription pad of here are things you need to learn to become the following profession, and more of a “what is the root of what’s causing our current world issues? Lets work to address that!”. The top-down approach (in addition to the localized, leading through teaching example) signifies a prevention of social world-issues vs. treatment of world issues, with treatment plans where necessary. I think if the pedagogy we’ve been discussing for the last few weeks was implemented a 100% from the ministry down, I think we’d have students who aren’t afraid to be wrong – and thus, can operate through a problem-solving, inquiry approach to societal issues having grown up.

Kellner and Share suggest that literacies evolve and shift according to socio-cultural changes in society, and the interests of the elites. A question that came up for me while I read this was: what is it that we’re learning currently, from whose perspective? What are we be geared towards politically? Its a shame that we’re not able to ask these questions until university, or even graduate school, and that teachers in middle and high schools are often under the strict “I can’t talk about this, or discuss my views on this” guideline. I don’t think we can expect students to become engaged members of a democratic society if they aren’t able to discuss important (and controversial) issues in class.

Kellner and Share suggest that education loses its “transformative potential when programs teach students the technical skills to merely reproduce hegemonic representations” without the awareness of ideological implications or any type of social critique. I agree. What’s the point of education if all we’re doing is creating clones of sheep on a conveyor belt heading essentially the same direction – being programmed rather than being the one who’s doing the programming. We can’t “program” the world and education for a better future if we’re constantly being “programmed” to sustain hegemonic ideologies. This is why implementing critical media production in our classrooms is imperative in empowering those who are often marginalized or misrepresented in mainstream media (recent example: muslims). Media production allows us to engage in the social reality that the world is experiencing. Kellner and Share state, “the new technologies of communication are powerful tools that can liberate or dominate, manipulate or enlighten,” which is why it is crucial that educators teach students how to critically analyze technology and use it wisely.

Luke, A. et al. (2017) Digital ethics, political economy and the curriculum: This changes everything. In Handbook of Writing, Literacies and Education in Digital Culture. Routledge, New York. (In Press)

Luke et. Al, in their article titled, “Digital Ethics, Political Economy and the Curriculum” outline many of the same ideas and add social justice and ethics to the mix. As I mentioned above, Luke et. Al suggest a need for rethinking current policy and curriculum strategies through the following proposition: “the educational challenge raised by digital culture is not one of skill or technological competence, but one of participation and ethics.” They suggest that the educational challenge raised by digital culture requires (1) equitable access;  (2) ongoing dialogue over the personal and collective consequences of everyday actions and exchanges with digital resources and social media; (3) the critical examination of the semantic contents of media and how these may or may not portray the world; and (4) the use of media for the exchange of ideas, viewpoints and resources as part of a constructive civic and community engagement.

If the educational challenge raised by media is one of participation and ethics, how can youth engage and participate as valuable citizens in the public, political, cultural and economic sectors of the internet and media? I discussed the idea above that if middle or high school teachers are not willing or able to discuss critical issues in class, how are students supposed to understand that its okay to engage in what’s happening with the world? In relation to the internet and media, I think students won’t be able to critically analyze what’s wrong, right, truth, falsehood, representation and misrepresentation — especially in context of some of the “fake news” and Obama wire tapping that Trump speaks of. Without educators setting the example through pedagogy, I believe it would be very difficult for youth to engage as members of their local and global community without fear of being wrong and being marginalized for it. I think students need the questions around “what it is to be human”, ethics, and how to live “just and sustainable lives” in the constant barrage of information from digital technology. As Luke et. Al suggest, we need to refocus speaking, listening, print, digital reading/writing, signing/imagining to include “rigorous debate, study and analysis of digital communications in terms of: their real consequences as human actions; their ideological, scientific and cultural codes, truth claims and meanings; and their everyday possibilities for community based cultural and social action, for art and science, for human conviviality and sustainable forms of life.”

Week 6 [Mon Feb 13 ] Coding Literacies: Critical Literacies for an Algorithmic Culture

Ted Striphus The Cathedral of Computation: Living in an Algorithmic Culture

This week’s readings question and examine why we’re not teaching students how to code and program, instead of being programmed themselves. Ted Striphus’s article titled, “The Cathedral of Computation: Living in an Algorithmic Culture” discusses the fact that science and technology have turned into a new type of “theology”. He mentions that when the mechanical clock was invented, “people began thinking of their brains as operating ‘like clockwork’”, instead of something that came from their innovation. Striphus states that currently, with out technological innovation, we have started to think of our minds as  operating “like computers”, rather than technology operating like our brains. Relating this to last week’s readings and the idea that students are “programmed” in school rather than being taught how to program, I question: are we allowing computers to program us on a larger scale rather than it being us who program computers?

Something about that idea sounds almost sinister to me — that we have the potential to be subliminally or very openly programmed in a particular way. Isn’t this what media essentially is? Especially hateful, anti-muslim media rhetoric like CNN or Fox News, and their menacingly inaccurate portrayals of Islam. I directly connect this question and idea to last week’s discussion on the importance of having our students programming computers instead of being programmed by them, so that they may engage critically and meaningfully with real world problems through not being afraid to “get it” [problem solving] right the first time. Striphus’s discussion highlights the importance of understanding how coding and algorithms work so that students do not remain “innocent lambs” waiting to be led wherever the shepherd [programmers, media and the groups that put money behind that programming] pleases.

Rushkoff’s  Code Literacy: A 21st-Century Requirement. (2012)

Rushkoff, in his article, “Code Literacy: A 21st-Century Requirement”, mentions that companies like Facebook are far more than just a social networking site — that individuals programming Facebook aren’t “sitting around wondering how to foster more enduring relationships for little Johnny…but rather how to monetize their social graphs”. Social networking sites like Facebook accumulate personal data about each of their users and use algorithms and coding to control what that person sees and gear advertising on their home page. This makes me think about all the other companies Facebook buys, like Instagram, Oculus VR, WhatsApp, etc, and what it gains from those companies. I wonder about some of the dangers and issues (and positive outcomes) of companies like Facebook engulfing other smaller companies and making their technology their own. When Facebook bought Instagram, I remember something about many people being concerned that the pictures they put up on Instagram were no longer theirs and that Facebook had the right to do with them as they pleased, which was a reason some of my friends deleted Instagram. I connect this with the idea of leaving a digital footprint on the internet, and how intelligent it is to do that — while adapting to and keeping up with 21st century learning and coding literacies and pedagogies.

As Rushkoff mentions, code literacy is a requirement for participation in a digital world. He states, “when we acquired language, we didn’t just learn how to listen, but also how to speak. When we acquired text, we didn’t just learn how to read, but also how to write. Now that we have computers, we are learning to use them but not how to program them. When we are not code literate, we must accept the devices and software we use with whatever limitations and agendas their creators have built into them.” This is perhaps why it is incredibly important for our students to become code literate, so that they can stop settling for limitations and accepting programs at face value, instead of engaging critically and purposefully with the material instead.

One of Codecademy’s key insights being that “programming is best taught by doing”, connects very well with the concept of deeper learning, and that it is only through “doing” that we really learn something to the extent of being able to apply it effectively and critically. The article further discusses the importance of tying coding and programming to a real project, as it is crucial to engage with something that is personally meaningful for it to allow deeper learning.

Jenson, J. & Droumeva, M. (2016). Exploring Media Literacy and Computational Thinking: A Game Maker Curriculum Study

Jenson and Droumeva question: “(what) can children learn from constructing games?” This suggests that yes, we’ve established that there is great merit in having children code and program, rather than be programmed, and so now what? What sorts of things do children learn? From my understanding, the article does a good job highlighting how programming can increase student confidence and building capacity for deeper learning and engagement with STEM subjects.

Jenson and Droumeva state that the idea that all students are “digitally native” is not true,  and sometimes students don’t even have a familiarity with basic computer programming. and competencies. Perhaps this ties in with socioeconomic backgrounds and demographics and a lack of access to technology.

 

Jennifer Jenson: Learning through Game Design

Jenson’s thoughts on teaching kids how to use software to write, but not how to write software compounds the idea that if we want students to grow up and becoming members of society who care about what’s happening with their world (i.e. Trump), then we must give them the power to determine the “value creating capabilities” of the technology and resources around them. Jenson also goes on to state, “the illiterate of the 21C will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, & relearn”, and I agree with this notion. In a world that is constantly changing and evolving in terms of technological enhances, resources and global issues (such as global warming, wars, Trump), students must be willing and have the capacity to learn, unlearn and relearn ideas to constantly better and build upon their critical thinking skills.

 

Week 5 [Mon Feb 6 BLENDED] Situated Learning: Technology, New Media and Production Pedagogies Learning through Making, Design and Creative Production.

Production Pedagogy (Video). Connecting Production Pedagogies Theory to your ‘Media Tools Project‘ 

This week’s readings and blended learning task examine challenges and opportunities for new ways of teaching and learning. Suzanne De Castelle’s video, “The Pedagogies of Production” speaks about educational innovation through design, production and play, relating to ludic epistemology. De Castelle emphasizes designing and advancing education that is authentic to its time, as well as maintaining and raising educational standards through the production of meaningful materials.

Much of what De Castelle stated about there being a relationship between mental and manual production and its importance for 21C education – “learning through purposeful making”, pedagogy of being “doing” rather than being “done to”, resonated with me as both a young educator, and as a student. De Castelle mentions that learners build knowledge structures when they can design or construct things – when they have a thoughtful & critical audience. I connect this point with this week’s Media Tool’s Project (see video below). I chose to use iMovie to depict related, juxtaposed  videos of some of the greatest civil rights leaders and speeches in the history of the United States, with Donald Trump’s current doings in the political world. My goal was to show a stark contrast between what civil rights leaders like Malcolm X and Martin Luther King wanted for the future of their country, and what the current reality is. When trying to start my New Media Tools project, I thought about what’s currently important to me – what stays on my mind often: the muslim ban and Trump’s racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic rhetoric. I immediately knew that I wanted to work on something that held purpose for me and when thinking about which technological tool I wanted to use to explore some of my thoughts, I found iMovie to be rich in opportunities for juxtaposing video. Knowing I was creating for an audience that is thoughtful and critical, I didn’t worry too much about the nitty gritty details (like adding labeling, captioning – which would be done had this been a polished piece of work), and focused on what meaning I could draw out of this project. While I was retrieving videos to use, I didn’t know what I wanted the end product to look like, but found that as I started creating, engaging critical thinking with the real world, and “doing”,  the video found its path – starting and finishing with Martin Luther King’s speech titled, “I Have a Dream”. I came out of this project with deeper learning and a sharper sense of “what have the American people done”, having seen some of the greatest civil rights speeches in American history, and Trump’s destructive and hateful rhetoric.

Relating the project to De Castelle’s video, production pedagogy is characterized by producing something that is useful to the students, which transforms the relationship between the work that they do and the products of that work. When they have no control over their own activities, students can feel alienated from their own learning. Production pedagogy maximizes “use” value to producers of what they produce and isn’t interested in market value. Ultimately, I had the opportunity to play with what I found meaningful in my current life, and found myself situated and invested in my own learning. The only constraint of iMovie that I found was the fact that I could not make the project interactive – it was much more a view and listen project for the audience, and I would have liked to offer them a more interactive experience.

That leads me to Blikstein’s article, Seymour Papert Legacy: Thinking about Learning; Learning about Thinking (2016), and Papert’s vision that children should be programming computers rather than being programmed by them. Blikstein comments that “many children are held back in their learning because they have a model of learning” in which you have either “’got it’” or “‘got it wrong’” (2016). But when its someone doing the programming, its almost never right the first time – which means the person has to do some trial and error, and play to get the media as they want it. Blikstein reflects, and I agree, that if we looked at our education system, its content, and pedagogy from the same lens, we would have individuals who would be much more likely to think about real-world problems (like Trump, wars, environmental sustainability, human rights violations to name a few), as a puzzle to be programmed and solved, or at least, approached without the fear of being wrong. We would have individuals who are far more critical in their thinking, and therefore, actions, than in current society.

Professor Thumlert, in his article titled, “Affordances of Equality: Ranciere, Emerging Media, and ‘The New Amateurs’” (2015), discusses a method of equality that “detaches learners” from traditional, curricular education and enables them to engage in their own learning through “artistic/intellectual challenges” (p. 120). Professor Thumlert reinforces the idea from the previous reading, video and my own production project that enabling students to take on an “embodied learning adventure” makes learning their own, which ultimately allows for deeper learning and critical thinking to be applied outside of the classroom, without the presence of the teacher. Professor Thumlert also mentions that traditional curriculum has “driven a wedge between learning and pleasure” – disengaging students from learning in the classroom and on their own, which takes away from the quality of our lives as global citizens (2015, p. 120).

Watch my Civil Rights & Donald Trump iMovie Video Here

Week 4 [Mon Jan 30] Being There: ‘Deeper Learning’ with/in MUVES and Virtual Realities (VR)

This week’s set of readings asks us to think about how Virtual Reality (VR) can become a part of our current education pedagogy. In  The Role of Digital Technologies in Deeper Learning, Chris Dede looks at the role that digital technologies can and must take on to provide students with meaningful opportunities for deeper learning. Dede suggests that our model of education has previously existed as a “routine, almost mechanical process analogous to the production of material goods on an assembly line”, and that students are treated as “interchangeable parts” to meet minimum standards before moving on to the next grade for more of the same (Dede, 2014, p. 1). Dede suggests a shift in how we teach our material in the classroom to engage students in deeper learning, rather than the industrial assembly-line style, and he suggests we do that through technology. Teachers are invited to make better use of instructional strategies through technology to engage students in mastering abstract principles and skills, collaborative learning, opportunities for self-directed learning, and “learning to be” rather than learning “about” or “to do” (Dede, 2014, p. 4). I relate this to Gee’s “simulations of experience and preparation for action”, as virtual reality technology might even give us an externalized idea about the ways in which the human mind works and thinks (Gee, 2007). This idea would perhaps allow us, as educators, to gear learning content in a way that promotes deeper learning for abstract problems – helping support students who take ownership of their education.

Dede goes on to discuss the merits of Digital teaching platforms (DTPs), which can empower teachers to use four strategies leading to deeper learning: “case based learning, multiple varied representations of concepts, collaborative learning and diagnostic assessments” (2014, p. 7). I think it is important to note that just as in physical classrooms, DTPs must also incorporate differentiated instruction (by way of participating in a variety of activities with a variety of outcomes in a number of different ways), to provide students with the most engagement and learning.

In Bailenson et. al’s,  The Use of Immersive Virtual Reality in the Learning Sciences: Digital Transformations of Teachers, Students, and Social Context, VR technology was used to examine student/teacher interaction in the classroom by way of eye contact and tracking movement. I was not as impressed by this article as I was with the others, as I believe that the focus is still very much on teachers and how they can physically impart knowledge in the most effective way possible. While results about student/teacher eye contact can be implemented in the future in terms of specific teacher skills, I believe it would be much more helpful to focus primarily student-centric, IBL approaches to new pedagogy.

In Up close and personal: Virtual reality can be an instrument for social change, Villanueva examines the use of VR in developing empathy. Darvasi’s Five Ethical considerations for using virtual reality with children and adolescents also speaks to building empathy by placing the subject in the shoes of someone in the 9/11 towers at the time of collapse. Darvasi raises some excellent concerns around VR and ethics in his article, including: mental illnesses, psychological change, social hallucinations, disassociation conditions. There is, of course, also the issue of utilizing VR to portray a horrible event that happened and showcasing someone’s pain through VR – how ethical is that, even if the idea is to teach empathy? Darvasi is right in questioning whether its acceptable to watch real falling bodies on the news, but is it acceptable to experience that falling body’s flight through the sky through VR? While there is great potential in using VR for education, there is also great responsibility in using it ethically.

With using technology in the classroom, there would definitely be a change in the roles of and relations between students and teachers. DTP would provide students with the agency and self-efficacy to engage in class material at their own pace and in a carefully constructed online community, while engaging with the teacher when needing support. Students and teachers would becoming co-creators and co-collaboraters in learning, which would allow for deeper learning for the both of them. Innovations  in VR would provide students and teachers alike with the opportunity to create meaningful learning questions far beyond the classroom, allowing for them to become much better citizens engaged in the happenings of the world (like Trump’s election). If our goal as educators is to help students reach deeper learning, an inquiry based approach to learning must become common practice with the use of technology as a tool to that learning.