Aborigi-Me in Early Practice

Hi,
My partner and I created a unit plan for a First Nations play by Tomas Highway called The Rez Sisters. The play was put on by Saunders Secondary students last year and the playwright himself came to see it! Highway has close ties to London as he completed his undergraduate music degree here before working with urban Aboriginals in Toronto and before he wrote this play. I thought it could be useful for anybody teaching the play itself, planning to teach Aboriginal youth, going to Saunders, interested in a local celebrity or any/all of the above.

My partner and I used a wiki-space to collaborate in the unit's creation. I have to say I enjoyed this Web 2.0 tool.It helped me visualize the creation of the assignment and the different pages forced me to "chunk" my work which helped with my anxiety issues. I guess I'm speaking to the converted, but this technology tool really helped me and I would encourage my future students to use this tool in any written, group projects.

Aborigi-Me in Spirit

How great was Friday’s Aboriginal Education Day? Here were some highlights for me from Dan Smoke, Mary Lou Smoke, and Christy R. Bressette ’s addresses:
• The prohibition of smudging today merely continues the cultural assimilist laws of the past i.e. Potlatch Laws
• First Nations clans ( fish, bear, snake, heron, etc.) function in similar ways to the Scottish clan system
• Historical and current educational policy for First Nations peoples include the: creation of the Indian Act ( 1876), residential school system, reserve federal day schools system, integration policy and community based school
• In case you missed it, Mary Lou led the auditorium in the signing of the “Water Song”. It was awesome!


There were so many workshops I wanted to go to but I obviously couldn’t be in 7 places at once. I did attend Bill Hill’s Double Vision: Single Focus and Faron Whiteye’s Policy/Policing and Teaching workshops if anyone’s interested. I would love to share. Can anyone share some ideas or lessons they learned from their workshops with me? My partner and I are doing a unit plan for Tomson Highway’s The Rez Sisters and are very much interested on hearing ideas. In terms of resources, there are a lot out there but here is a link to curriculum.org’s invaluable Teacher’s Resource Guide to Aboriginal Literatures in Canada.

Aborigi-Me in Mind (Educational Psychology)

Echoing many scholars’ sentiments, Dan Smoke notes that “our education system needs to be indigenized”. Therefore similar to the ways in which multiliteracies bridges the curriculum to our multi literate students, Dan spoke of ‘culture based ‘curriculums that welcome FNMI ( First Nations, Metis & Inuit) students within the multicultural mosaic . Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Distance (ZPD) asks the teacher both to scaffold student learning towards objectives but also to understand where the student is coming from.

Aborigin-Me in Body (Professional Practices)

Under “Relevancy and Voice”, Christy Bressette reiterated the necessity to appeal to students socio-cultural backgrounds through the recounting of her Grade 7 science experience. Through a fishing presentation she was allowed to engage in a form of storytelling, do well on her science project and involve her father in an assignment that valued his knowledge. Having been given autonomy to pick her project, she was engaged in the assessment form, content and purpose for the first time. Not only did Christy prove she had valuable academic knowledge to impart onto the teacher, but she also proved to non-First Nations peers that she had valuable skills and knowledge related to her culture. Christy didn’t remain the only expert in the school, as she noticed a dialogue opening between her First Nation cohorts and other students around fishing and hunting. When listening to Christy’s story, I couldn’t help thinking that I had heard it before… Caleb Johnston from the Socio-Cultural Chapter (7) from Edmunds & Edmunds! Remember the little Cree boy who began to disengage from school in Grade 3, as he’s increasingly asked to demonstrate his knowledge through printed text (233)? Caleb, like Christy, was given an opportunity to combine his academic and cultural knowledge and earned an excellent mark and “more importantly he earned respect and admiration on from his classmates” (251).

Aborigi-Me in Heart (Social Foundations)

Dan Smoke also spoke about educators’ roles in teaching future FNMI students so that they’re both literate in academic and traditional knowledge. Jerry Paquette’s 13B Social Foundations lecture echoes similar sentiments in that education ‘nurture’ “word warriors” who are can “engage mainstream powerbrokers on their own intellectual, philosophical, and political” conventions in order to cast political change (citing Turner 2006). I think most teachers would subscribe to this promise of education, as the “great equalizer”. By repeating the mantra that “education is our buffalo”, it’s clear FNMI peoples share similar educational hopes for their youth as everyone else. It’s a social equity issue.

Democratic Curriculum?

Jennifer Powers notes that multiliteracies promotes democracy in that “[d]emocracy involves a conversation where all voices are heard” (14). While the use of technology under the banner of multiliteracies gives students more tools into the curriculum and opportunity to demonstrate their talents, does it privilege students who can afford access to these technologies? Can multiliteracies’ technologies help democracy if we are fixed on the latest, newest, greatest and often the most expensive? How can multiliteracies promote democracy when access to technologies isn’t democratic or equal? What will happen to students from lower social economic stratas? How do we balance increased accessibility for some students and decreased accessibility for other students? Going back to Social Foundations, what are the social equity issues? Do students who has less access, have less democracy? Are their voices heard, muffled or silenced? How can we help them be heard?

Leaps and Bounds of Faith

From the outset, it’s interesting how Jennifer Powers’ Curriculum Theorizing for Multiliteracies:A Rebel with a Cause (The NERA Journal, 2006, 42(1), p. 14-18), frames multiliteracies within educational psychology’s socio-cultural approach through her mention of John Dewey and Lev Vygotsky. Powers notes that education should “meet today’s students where they are, taking into account who they are and what learning methods they employ, are familiar with, need to try and enjoy” ( Powers 13). Recalling the Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Distance (ZPD) from last semester, educators and curriculums need not only to scaffold students' learning towards some end goal but also to meet students’ needs in a world that demands skills beyond the written text. Metaphorically, we shouldn’t ask students to take complete leaps of faith every day. Instead, we should “acknowledge, use, and foster the multiple literacies brought to the table by our students” (14). Quoting Maxine Green (2004), Powers warns against curriculums becoming “Crystal Palace of ideas” (14). This ‘ivory tower’ criticism echoes Damien Hirst’s insistence that art needs audiences discussed in my earlier Prezi post (17:53). So if art needs audiences, shouldn’t our curriculum be accessible to our clients/buyers/students?

However it’s interesting how Powers insists teachers’ “responsibility to use tools best suited to our students” that “are not necessarily limited to pen and paper any more” (14), when her two unit plan exemplars only minimally use technology tools to demonstrate student learning and skills. For instance, the “Playwriting 101: From Story to Stage” unit plan indeed asks students to transform the “written media and the short story format” into “three-dimensional meaning” of “sound, speech, and movement” through improv and rewriting assignments (16). However there is no use of technology and its still very much print focused. While the “Bob” of her childhood might not have to write a “decent five paragraph essay” (15) in her unit plan, I still found it hard to see how his excellent computer skills were given opportunity to shine in what was offered. Certainly, Powers(13) understands multiliteracies to be “the ability to encode or decode meaning in any of the forms of representation used in the culture to convey or express meaning” (quoting Eliot W. Eisner 1994). Therefore multiliteracies doesn’t merely mean using technology for technology’s sake but actually finding the proper tools for the tasks, students and learning goals.

But perhaps my criticisms aren’t so much the unit plans themselves but merely a result of the fact that the article was written in 2006? While just over half a decade old, things have radically changed within the fast moving context of technological innovation. Way back in 2006, YouTube was Time Magazine’s invention of the year and the first installment of the Did You Know? videos was in its inception. Facebook was going through its terrible 2’s and Wikipedia was only a 5 year old toddler. Even my beloved Prezi would have to wait 3 long years until its launch in April 2009.

But perhaps, I am missing the point entirely? Maybe Powers lack of technological specificity takes into account the rapid nature of technological innovations? If she had made reference to particular technologies in 2006, what certainty did she have that they’d still exist when her audience read her article subsequent? Perhaps they would have been made obsolete by our current ones. Who is to say our current web tools will still exist in the future? When’s the last thing you signed into your MySpace account? Did you even have one? Who is to say the next 6 years aren’t going to be as transformative or more so than the last 6? Therefore socio-cultural considerations dictates both what skills and knowledge students need to learn and the resources teachers have to teach those lessons.

Web Umteenth.O

Back in January, Al Jazeera reported on a breakthrough in nano-data technology that could lead to unimaginable device and platform inventions similar to the Web 2.0 innovations. Al Jazeera's Tarek Bazley reports:

Researchers at IBM have created the world's smallest magnetic digital-storage device,using just 12 atoms to hold a single data bit of information. The discovery could lead to a new class of memory chips that would make smaller, more energy efficient computers.




Given the exponential leaps in memory technology, what will this mean to the emerging Web 3.0 tools? Amazing! Scary?

Remixing=Learning=Creativity

Come check out my Prezi about remixing and creativity! It's a work in progess so bear with me and Prezi's inability to spell-check. Tell me what you think or at least help me proofread.Have a great weekend!

Macbeth 1.0 v.s. 2.0

Initially I couldn’t conceive of using technology to enhance my Macbeth lesson plan because it, as with Shakespeare teaching in general, emphasizes the transformation of the page’s word into stage actions. So given that my lesson primarily asked students to perform their knowledge in class, I didn’t want technology to disrupt this part of my lesson because I could not think of a web tool to facilitate this learning. Can anyone think of a web 2.0 tool I could have used? Suggestions are welcome. Therefore if one compares my original and revised lesson plans, you will notice that second half the lesson remains unchanged.

However, for the first half I decided to use Today’s Meet platform to facilitate film viewings and review discussions. I liked it because the platform demands a very low threshold of expertise and time investment. Participants don’t need to watch tutorials and sign up is easy. If students are comfortable tweeting or texting, they will easily use this tool. Instant Gratification! Second, I liked that it because it mimicked the review conversation already planned in my lesson with some value added benefits. In my original lesson, the teacher asked the questions and drove the conversations whereas in the revised lesson, the platform explicitly demands that students participate in the conversation through the texting medium that they’re comfortable in. The platform, as with other Web 2.0 tools, makes the brainstorming, questioning and formative clarification process that happens in all classes more deliberate for teachers and students. Although this was a surprise to me, it shouldn’t have been given that one of the key features of Web 2.0 is its participatory and collaborative nature.

The web tool also allowed me to add a media studies component to my specific expectations (creating media texts 3.1, 3.2). Rather than merely teaching through the web tool, this curriculum strand asks students to think about how different tools suite different purposes, audiences and conventions (teaching about the web tool) in the same way this lesson redesign assignment asked us to find different web tools to suit our teaching needs. The platform’s use could also open up a class discussion to the limits and benefits of expressing oneself within 140 characters and other critical literacy questions about technology.

Investigations and Ruminations

When I began to (re)view the “readings” for this week, I asked myself “How on earth were these related, so I could coherently talk about the Did you know? 4.0 video and the Creative Commons: What every Educator needs to know slideshow"? Rodd Lucier, the creator of the latter piece and an edublogger himself, drives home the point that educators need to model responsible use of material so that students are responsible consumers and producers themselves. This includes not only educating students on how to correctly attribute others' ‘intellectual property’, but also to make sure they learn to demand that their ideas be treated as valued properties deserving of attribution and compensation ($) too. Show them the money! Put in another way, the service helps students be responsible producers because it is an easy way for them to get copyright. It also enables them to authentically deal with authentic audiences and consumers. Given current discussions about the new 'knowledge' economy , it seems reasonable that educators arm students with the abilities to protect and determine the use of their knowledge.For edubloggers, Creative Commons(CC) also allows teachers to be credited for their work as producers – just any author is .

The idea of ‘educator as producer’ was then my portal from Lucier’s piece to the Did you know? 4.0 piece. From what I can gather, Karl Firsh, an educator himself, created the Did you know? series for his High School in an attempt to stress the importance of valuing and enhancing students multiliteracy skills within the education system. The Powerpoint presentations he created ‘went viral’ and XPlane, a “visual thinking and communications services” company, “voluntarily donated their time” to make the presentation more appealing and appetizing to a broader audience. Therefore, Did you Know 2.0 is still very much education and student centred. But low and behold 4 versions later, we get this slick, monetarily-focused reincarnation of the original, which is of little surprise given the purpose and producers of the piece.

If one scrolls down the video’s description, the contributors are credited to XPlane first, which in 2010 was bought by the Dachis Group, a company that markets itself as helping commoditize “ social conversations and influencer types” to create “ social brand engagement programs” . The second contributor is no other than The Economist who tags a promotion at the end of the video for its Third Annual Media Convergence Forum. The forum’s explicit mandate is to “examine how marketing executives can produce a return on their investments using strategies that involve content distribution and branding across multiple platforms”. In other words, how can they make money on content producers such as students, teachers and everyone else? Show the marketers the money!

But surely I am not suggesting that we are living in a zero-sum world in which commerce and education must or ever have been mutually exclusive. Karl Firsh and others do great work and should be credited and compensated accordingly. It would seem educators like Karl, must navigate the murky waters of copyright, corporate interests and accountability in the same ways, but to a greater extent, we as individuals must all engage the 21st century media landscape. These intrepid edubloggers are themselves modelling what it means to be agents and literate in the internet age. They are literally and metaphorically their own literary agents; protecting, publishing and promoting their own words and works. But I guess if I'm uncertain and weary of the terrain, I should anticipate how treacherous the navigation can be for our students and youth. This is not to say that I can personally teach students all they need to know about multiliteracy and how to be critical consumers and producers, but I sure hope I can help. Here's hoping!

You've been Surveyed!

Obviously knowing students is important to all teachers. As I am anticipating my next practicum to be in a History class, my survey is interested in how students view History as a part of their lives. This is my attempt to understand students’ prior knowledge and my hinting at the fact that History shapes the very lives we all live. I also ask them to discuss their learning strengths and needs as a student overall or within History since strengths aren’t often restricted to certain subjects and since learning skills can be transferred into many subjects. I hear a mantra coming along: We don’t teach subjects, we are teaching people. Moving away from the academics, my survey is also interested in the student as a whole person so I asked about their interests and what they do for fun. Personally, athletics was integral in my continuation in education. To understand that ‘play’ and ‘work’ aren’t mutually exclusive is to understand how most people engage with the world around them and gear their ‘play’ into careers. Just think of all our beloved Youtube gurus who have parlayed their genuine interests or specialized expertise into lucrative partnerships with advertising agencies and sponsors. This is a brave new world!