EDUC 6816 - Weekly Reading #9

Original by Markus Angermeier Vectorised and linked version by Luca Cremonini
CC-BY-SA-2.5, via Wikimedia Commons
("Folksonomy" is my favorite term on this Word Cloud)

 

This is a response to:

The Participatory Classroom: Web
2.0 in the Classroom

What makes a literacy practice a "new literacy."
According to this article, literacy practices that emphasize participation, collaboration, shared ownership, and multimodality are considered "new literacies."

How might a Citizen Journalism project support the development of "new literacies."
The Citizen Journalism project emphasizes production over consumerism. In other words, the students will be producing a journalistic report instead of just watching, reading, or listening to one. This is placing emphasis on participating in their community, especially because non-traditional research methods are used (in my project, interviews will form the central part). They will be creating this project with their classmates, and will therefore share ownership of the project. On a final note, the project will embrace multiple uses of communication, instead of the report being just written, my students will be blogging, creating a radio report, and digitally "writing" a report with images and text while collaboratively creating a website.

What is critical literacy and how does your Citizen Journalism project encourage crtical literacy? How might you change your project to encourage critical literacy?
Critical literacy is examing the social, political, idealogical and economic interests in all text. My project could examine class issues in tourism and unemployment. For instance, people who have these jobs are from the lower class, earning low wages and stuck in the cycle of lay-offs. The low wages of the poor, benefits the middle classes (most of the tourists) by keeping their travel costs down. In the case of Snowshoe, the upper class is benefited by the low wages of the poor by keeping expenses of the resorts down and increasing their profit margins.

What problems may arise when students use Web 2.0 tools for learning in school and how might teachers capitalize on these opportunities to promote information literacy?
Which leads me to my quote this week:

"Because this posting happens in a public space, it becomes particularly important for students to understand the ethical and political context behind their work. Is the content the posted hurtful towards a person or group? Is the information they are publishing accurate and reliable? Are they contributing to knowledge or to misinformation?" (Asselin & Moayeri, 2011)

I think schools are reluctant to use these tools because of fear of liability issues and "safety" on the internet. However, I would argue that by teaching the "rules" of being a good digital citizen and then allowing students to have real-world practice within the classroom, this could help deter online bullying outside of the classroom. If done right, a school could, by embracing the democratic power and openness of social networking (in particular), could create a culture of online citizenship. A culture of good online citizenship is, in my opinion, intrinsically tied to our democratic future.

Additional Resource:
20 ways to use Edmodo
I was thinking of social networking alternatives to Facebook (since that site is blocked) and remembered that Edmodo was a possibility. It even, slightly, resembles Facebook. This slide has some great ideas of how to use Edmodo in the classroom. Figuring out how to make Edmodo work for my teaching context is definitely on my summer to-do list.


References:
Asselin, M., & Moayeri, M. (2011). The participatory classroom: Web 2.0 in the classroom. Practical Strategies Literacy Learning: the Middle Years, 19(2), i - vii. Retrieved from ictandliteracy.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/practical-strategies.pdf