As I began this project, I found myself in a state of confusion as to exactly what I was supposed to be doing. Are the directions to teach my fellow peers about different forms of literacy or to create a lesson that encompasses my selected form of literacy as well as generating a lesson from a topic that mixes the two. After asking many questions and understanding exactly what the task at hand was, I was finally able to wrap my head around exactly what I would be doing in order to convey the importance of social literacy through the computer-based program known as Jing.
Jing is a useful tool that allows for users to take a screen capture or video of their computer screen. From a pedagogical perspective this allows for me, as a teacher, to post in-class lectures that include exactly what I have on my computer screen, the additional information I offer via a voice recorder, and the ability for students to look back at these sessions as needed in the future. I once heard about Jing through my CEP 416 class that offered the idea of approaching education through a "Flipped Classroom" approach. This strategy for learning requires that teacher's flip from the traditional classroom setting of teaching students during lecture and allowing them to work on homework at home. In the Flipped Classroom, the teaching/lecture portion of education is done at home through online lectures and homework is done in the classroom. The hopes in using this approach is to offer students the opportunity to ask questions while working on their work as opposed to teaching students and then asking them to go do their homework at home without assistance.
Although I do not have the ability to decide this approach is best for my students, as most school districts make this choice. I do on the other hand have the ability to record my everyday lectures so my students are able to refer to them at any and all times when they are in need of assistance on their homework or studying for a test. Moreover, using Jing to record a lecture allows for parents/guardians to have the resource of referring to in-class lectures as opposed to being in a state of confusion while aiding their children in their homework.
I have learned the importance of allowing both parents and students the opportunity to access resources in order to get the most amount of work/comprehension in a short time. In addition, I have also learned that social literacy is used in a variety of venues that are used in everyday life as well as in the classroom. Due to this I realized that Jing is a valuable tool that I believe should be used in the classroom as much as possible. Social literacy is something that our students are accustomed with and instead of fighting against them, we should work with them.
When first planning this project, I knew I wanted to do cultural literacy because I think it is incredibly important to include different cultures into the classroom, especially in urban classrooms that may be very diverse. When really researching what cultural literacy is, I found that it is not only including diverse cultures but it is also vitally important to include the culture that students are familiar with that will help them participate in society. Students need to learn about their own culture in school. This was seen in some of my research about how students need to be taught what a stop sign is and what it means and that is a part of cultural literacy. When beginning this project I thought I knew exactly what cultural literacy was, but this project definitely opened up my eyes to what it truly is and how important it is to include in the classroom.
ReplyDeleteI also thought I could create a more interactive iMovie for this project. When working with my technology, I realized it is more difficult than I anticipated. I think I created a great introductory video about cultural literacy that could be used to teach future teachers about the topic, but this technology is not one that lends itself to being very interactive, but I still think that it serves a purpose and I was able to use it in a great way to talk about cultural literacy. If I were to want to use a technology that is more interactive, I would not use iMovie, but if I wanted to create a video as an introduction to a lesson or something else, I would definitely use iMovie again for my future classroom.
From this project, I feel like I have learned quite a bit about different types of literacy. I think many of these different types are included into the classroom in some form or another but need to be included more. When looking into cultural literacy for my project, I came across some information about how to include it for ESL students that I had never thought about. We as teachers don't need to be afraid to incorporate culture into the classroom. It can really help all students to better understand cultural contexts in the stories they are reading. Students are very receptive to this literacy as well and can handle more than we give them credit for.
The same is true for digital literacy. Students are much more advanced in their digital literacy than we give them credit for. I consider myself pretty digitally literate and I know that by the time the current generation gets to be my age, they will have far surpassed my abilities, solely because we have become so dependent on technology. Students become digitally literate out of need because our world has become so digitally literate. They must be that way to be successful in our world. This project has definitely opened up my eyes to the importance of the many different kinds of literacy that should be involved in our classrooms.
From the start I knew I wanted to use weebly. I find it to be very user friendly and I was pretty familiar with it after taking CEP 416. However, as I was completing my website I did end up having more problems than I originally anticipated. Often I found that it would take a long time loading and/or it would not allow me to embed certain videos onto the web page.
ReplyDeleteI did learn a lot about the different types of literacy as I was creating and researching my literacy of choice, social lit. I found all the research about what may happen to a child that does not become socially literate to be very interesting. Although it is something that you think children should just naturally pick up on through social interaction with peers and others around them, that is not necessarily true in today's day and age with all of the social media around us. We often think that children know much less about technology than they actually do and we, as future educators, must take advantage of the technology around us.
I think with weebly and social lit. I am most interested in creating a classroom website for both students and parents to view. I want to work to open lines of communication between myself, students and their parents. So much of a child's education comes from home and if you have parents and students who are willing to put in extra work at home then a classroom website it a great resource for multiple reasons.