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Presentations: Digital Citizenship and Online Research

February 8, 2010 By Brad W 2 Comments

I begin almost every course that I teach with a brief media unit on 21st century skills and media literacy. Because much of what students are doing today is online, I like to think that we are doing our best to mold quality digital citizens.

Here are two presentations I share with my students near the beginning of each semester: Digital Citizenship and Smart Research, complete with an embedded assignment.

These presentations ask and attempt to answer two fundamental questions:  (1) In our wired world, can our students protect themselves while positively contributing to the information highway?  And (2), with millions of websites at their fingertips, can our students effectively evaluate websites?

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Icons for these presentations are from DryIcons

Filed Under: 21st Century Skills Tagged With: digital citizenship, evaluating resources, media literacy, online research

Facebook at School

November 20, 2008 By Brad W 3 Comments

What goes around, comes around … and goes around again. And when we’re talking about social media, it seems the speed of that cycle is just that much faster.

For example, Facebook is already retro. At the end of our last school year — that would be June of this year, only five months ago — I heard students saying, “Facebook! Oh that’s sooooo 10 minutes ago!” There must have been a change of heart over the summer, however, for it now seems to be enormously popular with that same crowd.

Facebook is one of those tools that I have wanted to incorporate into the classroom, but I’m finding my efforts to do so frustrated.

Before I go any further, I will state emphatically that I have no interest in becoming Facebook “friends” with students, a move that in my opinion would be completely unprofessional.

There are a couple of ways that I have tried to use Facebook as a tool for building students’ ability to make connections between texts and their world. First, I like to ask them to build a Facebook profile for a main character. Take Macbeth, for example. Students learn a lot about the Thane by building him a Facebook profile and thereby asking questions like, “Who are his friends? What groups would he join? What would be on his wall?”

The second main use I’ve found for Facebook is as a tool for students who are building media campaigns. Creating a Facebook group and event for imaginary media campaigns is a natural choice for students. Doing so helps them reconsider questions like who their target audience is and what images best communicate their ideas.

But I’m finding my efforts to use Facebook stymied by school internet security. (More on that another day.) In short, I can’t access Facebook in the classroom or lab. This means that students can’t present their online Facebook work, and I can’t evaluate it. And since becoming a ‘friend’ with a student is not an option for me personally, I’m not going to be able to evaluate it outside of the classroom, either

So I guess that what I’m looking for now is a blank electronic template that looks like a Facebook profile. Perhaps a template that is created in PowerPoint and links only from slide to slide rather than to actual online groups or friends. If done well, the students might really enjoy the activity.

Or maybe I could go back to paper and pen. Or to quill and ink. Or perhaps chalk and slate.

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Image by Jacob Botter

Filed Under: 21st Century Skills Tagged With: classroom, English, facebook, Literacy, media literacy, social media

Lesson Debrief: Media Campaign Assignment

September 24, 2008 By Brad W Leave a Comment

I tend to start my Grade 12 English (College level) courses out with a unit that exposes students to media and understanding messages. I’ve been experimenting lately with a unit culminating activity in which students design their own media campaign.

Students are asked to work individually or in groups of 2 or 3. Their task is to select a school club, team or event to promote. Their media campaign must use six different promotional tools delivered using a variety of media. All elements must include a hero-figure or spokesperson, since we also use this unit to look at heroes in the media. And of course, their campaign should demonstrate their understanding of the Five Key Questions that we use in approaching media.

Students present their campaign to the class in 5-10 minutes. Then they write a letter to me that explains their rationale for choosing their promotional elements, the strengths of their campaign, what they’d do differently next time, and what they’ve learned.

What Worked Well

  • Students used technology, and they used it better, than ever before. They even brainstormed via the class wiki!
  • Students were genuinely excited about their campaigns. They chose their “clients” based on their interests and involvement at school.
  • The cover letters were a good way for students to pause and reflect on their own learning.

What Needs Work

  • I must remember to include peer evaluation this early in the semester, as some students tend to ride the coattails of their peers.
  • My rubric needs to better include the cover letter and evaluation of metacognition.
Filed Under: Lessons Tagged With: english lesson, media campaign, media literacy, student media assignment

Preparing our kids for the future

February 18, 2008 By Brad W Leave a Comment

There’s been a wonderful conversation going on at Weblogg-ed about what our kids’ futures will require them to be. Miguel Guhlin has synthesized the original thoughts of Will’s with those of the commentors on the post.

I’m mulling over two of Will’s points in particular right now, though I suspect I’ll come back to all of them in the future.

Paper Training Students

The first is that although students will need to be less dependent on paper, we are still paper training them. This hits home, coming on the heels of my thoughts on teaching handwriting to secondary students. I feel that I need to “paper train” students — and do this well — because their secondary school success depends in part on their ability to write a standardized pen-and-paper test. At the same time, I want to prepare them for a conceivable future where paper is no longer the common communication medium. I feel that at times I’m working with a weird mix of tools and strategies, trying to meet both short-term and long-term learning goals.

I think that it’s going to come down to what several commentors suggested: kids need to know how to learn new skills themselves. I think of the different communication mediums I’ve been using over the past ten years — from email to instant messaging to websites, blogs, wikis, and social network sites. I didn’t learn how to use these in school, but I know how to learn how to use these. (In most cases, I talk to my brother-in-law who seems to absorb all things technological ahead of the curve, but that’s beside the point.)

Fluent in creating and consuming hyper-text

The idea here is that basic reading and writing skills will not suffice. I think of my observations of students’ online reading, and I agree: reading hypertext requires a different mindset than ‘basic’ reading. One needs to understand why a link is there, and why it may or may not be helpful to click through to it, and how to navigate back. One also needs to understand the architecture of hypertext environments. I found blogs quite confusing at first until I became familiar with their common features; I suspect that I need to take the time to help students recognize some of those common features to ease their own reading.

And then there is hypertext, where indeed, a very different writing style is needed. I feel like I’m slowly being convinced that student-owned blogs are going to be essential teaching tools in my near future.

Filed Under: 21st Century Skills Tagged With: media literacy, On My Mind, OSSLT, Reading, Writing

Lesson Debrief: Analyzing "Batman Begins"

February 14, 2008 By Brad W 2 Comments

With my Gr. 12 English class, I’m in the midst of a unit that asks, “What makes a person great?” This lesson builds on our conversations about characteristics of great people, features of a great movie, and the blockbuster phenomenon: in other words, media literacy. Once again, I owe a lot to the good folks at the Media Awareness Network, as I launch this 3-or 4-day lesson with a slightly modified version of their camera shots lesson. After talking about the hero journey, camera shots, and comic heroes, students are ready to discuss the techniques used by movie directors to portray a hero.

I’ve used Batman Begins several times with this lesson, and as much as I like mixing things up from class to class, I keep returning to this movie because it works so well.

What I like

  • Batman Begins, suprisingly, has not been seen by the majority of my students. It’s always nice to work with something that is new for most of the class. And the upcoming Dark Knight adds an extra level of intrigue.
  • Bruce Wayne/Batman offers an interesting portryal of the hero’s journey.
  • The camera techniques used in Batman Begins are a rich discussion source. During class, I play the movie for a few minutes, pause it, and ask what students have noticed about the camera angles (or anything else from music to script to costuming). We talk about the the movie’s director’s decisions, why they were made, and what impact they have on the audience. Students invariably get involved and enthusiastically share their ideas. (A high school English teacher’s dream come true.)

What needs work

  • This lesson portrays yet another male hero. I want to find more strong female characters for this unit, and indeed the entire course, both of which are too male-focussed right now. Aeon Flux is an obvious alternative for this lesson with its female hero; however, I tend to use that movie in my Grade 9 class. I could use it again, I suppose, but then it just gets a bit boring for both me and the students.

Final notes

This lesson markedly changes students’ media literacy. One student half-complained, half-joked, “I’ll never watch movies the same way again!” That is exactly what I want to hear. I have a friendly debate with a colleague about our role here: he is of the opinion that we shouldn’t spoil the way students watch movies, while I am convinced that students should be equipped to see movies as constructed re-presentations of reality. For me, then, this is an almost-perfect lesson.

Filed Under: 21st Century Skills, Lessons Tagged With: hero's journey, lesson, media literacy, movies, On My Mind