CL
COM410 Digital Learning
Leap 1:
Freshman Orientation at Pine Crest High School is one of the most intimidating events a 14-year old can experience. There are so many new pieces of information you have to pretend to understand, because everyone else around you pretends to understand it and you do not want to look like a fool. There are class schedules, bell times, a whole new campus, and strict rules to abide by. But more than anything, I will never forget my introduction to Facebook. The group leaders brought my entire Orientation group into the library and sat us down at computers. We were told by our group leader to open Internet Explorer, and type in www.facebook.com. We were then told to make accounts, "Type in your name, type in your new school e-mail, make a profile!" I vividly remember being so confused by this process. Was this a part of our school programs? Would our classes be linked to this website? Was this only for our high school? What was the point of this website? How was it supposed to be used? I had to put up a photo of myself? Who would see it? All I knew was that I, "just had to make a profile" because it was, "the coolest thing". But no one told me why, or who thought it was cool. I nervously went through the entire set-up process. What is your name: Christina Lewis. What school do you attend: Pine Crest High School. Relationship Status: Single. Did my teachers really need to know that? Would they ever see it? After I made my profile that day, I do not think I touched it again for weeks. It was only until a few classmates started asking if, "I was on facebook" and informed me that they would, "friend me" that I realized this was an integral part of my new social scene.
I had no idea it would become one of the most important forms of communication in my world. Facebook was where I found out the Osama Bin Laden was killed. Facebook is where I was informed that my cousin was having a baby. Facebook updates me as to political debates and the newest cat videos, simultaneously.
And for a brief ten minutes in the library on my first day of high school, it was one of the most utterly confusing and intimidating things I had ever come up against.
Leap 3:
For our LEAP 3 project we interviewed Professor Diane Quaglia Beltran. Professor Quaglia Beltran was eager to work with us on this project which made the whole process go very smoothly. Professor Q works part time in the writing and rhetoric department of the University of Rhode Island, teaching classes from WRT 104, WRT 106, WRT 235 and WRT 302. She and her fellow coworkers, Ed Crane and Yonty Friesem spent a year and a half researching and writing the journal article on the late Media Now research done in the 1970’s. For our interview with Professor Q we met face to face in Swan Hall. The interview focused on the rhetoric of digital writing and the journal article Media Now.
During the interview we asked questions about how professor Q incorporates traditional media platforms and media platforms used today in her classes, along with implementing the independent learning module. Continued with her opinion on how much technology has changed over a period of time and if she still continues to stay fluent in the media world herself. Her responses were quite explanatory and very informative. Professor Q was eager to tell us about the project that she had her students participate in. This was the first time she had asked her students to incorporate something they read in class into a media type project. She wanted them to make a music video, to get a static set of images with a musical background that supported their interpretation of home based on what they had read that semester in class or any story that they really enjoyed. Her response to their music videos was that “it just blew my mind what came back. The ability for students to use imagery and sonic media to get their point across and use lexical media, the words themselves, very appropriately gilded a much more balanced final project. It was probably more balanced then any essay could have been.”
The book Technology, Literacy and Learning: A Multimodal Approach by Carey Jewitt approaches the learning style of technology based classrooms and what can technology do to make a difference in learning. Carey Jewitt goes off of two theories, the multimodal theory and activity theory. These two theories allow Jewitt to “think of norms, rules, communities, roles, and student’s sign production in classroom as elements with historical cultural significance which go far beyond the observable classroom interaction.” Just like the Media Now that Professor Q researched on, Carey Jewitt analyzed video recordings of the use of new technologies in the classroom focusing mainly on the different modes and how the classroom interacted with these different modes. Carey Jewitt particularly emphasizes on “fact that when students engage with computer applications they learn from all modes present on the screen, not only from written words or speech, as traditionally thought.” Even though Media Now was a little bit different then Carey Jewitt’s experiment they are both similar in ways of seeing how the children reacted to technology in their curriculum.
Media Now was a curriculum created in the 1970's in order to help educate on the new and upcoming changes in media. At that time, there were already multiple advances in the media world and the Media Now curriculum was designed to help literate users with the new technology. On top of the advances with the internet, Media Now was designed to educate on all forms of media: television, photography, radio, and others. It experimented with teaching techniques; creating curriculum that changed the traditional notions such as teaching fluidly instead of laterally and independent studies. The program was stopped but the effects of it can still be found in modern media classes. However, even though the techniques Media Now used can be seen, technology itself has changed vastly. Media Now was the beginning of a culture that insisted on the need for the masses to understand and utilize technology, and with the immediate access and unstoppable growing power of technology today, remembering the basics can be as important as ever.
Technology, Literacy and Learning: A Multimodal Approach by Carey Jewitt. London: Routledge, 2006. 192 pp.
Quaglia Beltran, D. (2015, October 27). COM 410 LEAP 3 Interview [Personal interview].
Y. Friesem, D. Quaglia, and E. Crane / Journal of Media Literacy Education 6(2), 35-55
Leap 4: How did Copernicus convince others that the solar system is heliocentric rather than geocentric?
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