M3: Blog Post 3 - Leveraging Tools, Texts, and Talk in My Teaching Context

        This week I was very inspired by many of the articles. I particularly enjoyed reading the articles, Reframing the Medium, from Literacy Today, and Expanding Early childhood Literacy Curriculum through Play-Based Film-making and Popular Media. These articles go beyond students using technology in solitude and discuss ways to use technology to improve curriculum. 

There are many opportunities that technology can provide for our students. The idea of using film and film-making in the classroom is one that is very interesting to me. I have a lot of struggling readers in my classroom that could benefit greatly from this switch in media to learn various standards. I love the idea of teaching storytelling and story elements both through paperback books and movies. (Hernandez, 2017). There are so many books that have been adapted into movies too, this could be an opportunity to watch some of those, and engage students through multiple mediums. Introducing and learning from films could create a connection to storytelling that a student may never have gotten from reading. My hope is that students would fall in love with stories and storytelling through watching movies and reading books. This also links with the article written about students learning through exploring play-based film-making. (Coggin, 2024). Having students work to create and film a story themselves would put into practice all they have learned about storytelling. I love this idea as a project students work on throughout a unit on story elements. I do wonder how I could grade this particular exploration. It is a very open-ended project, and in the article it discusses how students may not even finish the story. I do think there would have to be some sort of final project or final assessment to see how well students understand the standards that are being addressed in the unit. Students can get distracted by the excitement of using technology, so I think it would be important to clearly state the learning objectives before and during the use of technology. 

One of the tensions discussed in The Importance of Still Teaching the iGeneration: New Technologies and the Centrality of Pedagogy, is the idea that too much technology is not beneficial to the students' understanding of a subject and leads to a lack of pedagogy. Students need exposure to learning in various different ways so that they are able to make connections and develop their own opinions on subjects. Also, technology is not universal. Schools are starting to become more technologically advanced, but there are some schools that cannot afford this. This can start to create gaps in students' knowledge and their education, due to something out of their control. I see this in the districts surrounding me. In the districts in more wealthy areas, students have access to more advanced technology and opportunities. In the rural district I work in, we do not have new and advanced technology and will probably never be able to keep up with districts that have more money. Technology is something that is very new to a lot of my students, they do not have their own devices at home, some do not even have WiFi. At the beginning of the year, my third graders come in with no knowledge of how to use the computers given to them. I have to teach them the basic skills of a computer before we can really start to engage with computers as an instructional tool for learning. These downfalls of technology are notable and are why schools need to be a healthy mix of new technology and traditional paper and pencil schooling. 

References

Coggin, Linda & Buchholz, Beth & Wessel Powell, Christy & Husbye, Nicholas & Wohlwend, Karen. (2014). Expanding Early childhood Literacy Curriculum through Play-Based Film-making and Popular Media. 

Hernandez, M. (2017///Nov/Dec). REFRAMING THE MEDIUM. Literacy Today, 35(3), 16-17. https://sunyempire.idm.oclc.org/login?url=https://www-proquest-com.sunyempire.idm.oclc.org/trade-journals/reframing-medium/docview/1966007223/se-2

Magnifico, A. M., Lammers, J. C., & Fields, D. A. (2018). Affinity spaces, literacies and classrooms: tensions and opportunities. Literacy, 52(3), 145–152. https://doi-org.sunyempire.idm.oclc.org/10.1111/lit.12133

Philip, T. M., & Garcia, A. D. (2013). The Importance of Still Teaching the iGeneration: New Technologies and the Centrality of Pedagogy. Harvard Educational Review, 83(2), 300–319. https://doi.org/10.17763/haer.83.2.w221368g1554u158

Semingson, P. (2017///Nov/Dec). DIGITAL LITERACIES FOR YOUNG READERS AND WRITERS. Literacy Today, 35(3), 30-31. https://sunyempire.idm.oclc.org/login?url=https://www-proquest-com.sunyempire.idm.oclc.org/trade-journals/digital-literacies-young-readers-writers/docview/1966005551/se-2